


Twenty Thousand Miles To An Oasis

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Eczema, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Witch Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:41:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 25,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel owns a little magic shop in the city. His life is quiet. His practice is simple. It all seems pretty easy until Dean comes into his life- Dean and his brother Sam, who has a skin condition from Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It rains outside, but it’s nice and warm inside of Castiel’s shop. A fire roars in the hearth near the door. The woodpile has been well stocked for weeks- the crystals and manometers along the mantle have been indicating that the rain and the cold would be coming for a while, and the almanac shows strong precedent, too.

People think Castiel is psychic. He’s not- he just researches well.

The herbs are fragrant where they dry and where they are being ground. The whole shop smells like the greens of fresh leaves and the browns of dried ones. Smells like old tea and woodash, like orange peels and flower blooms. Wooden floors and old rugs. Candle wax and colored glass.

Castiel’s not psychic, but he is magic.

He sits at the register in his old, inherited shop, reading his book. It’s old, not really a grimoire, but give it a few hundred years and it might aspire to such status. The pages are made of yellowed paper, the ink is faded. It puts off a dusty smell and has a wrinkled feel in his hands. It was his mother’s book and her mother’s before and her mother’s before her still. Had she had daughters, the book would have passed to her.

“Oh, what a strange blessing thou art,” she would say to Castiel, holding him close.

Mama had been a curious woman, and reluctant to see a heritage of witchcraft die because her only child had not been a girl. So she had defied the rules of the coven and left them, a whole continent and sea away, to teach her son their ways.

Castiel is a witch in the city, by himself.

Most of what he does is pretty minor magic. He alleviates headaches, he makes it snow sometimes, he encourages the flowers to bloom a little bigger, he fixes a broken wing or finds a missing dog. People don’t want big magic from him and he would be reluctant to give it to them anyway. No, Castiel does little things. Things so small it might look like he’d done nothing at all unless the right eye was looking.

He’s reading over a particular method of deriving oil when someone swaggers in.

He’s a little taller than Castiel is but much broader. There is a lean quality to Castiel’s muscles and body- this man is bulky. He holds his body defensively, anxiously. His eyes look about a little shifty- very nervous.

“Can I help you?” Castiel asks. If he’s a shoplifter, they’re usually disarmed enough by the question to turn around. If it’s something else, they’re usually anxious enough to just have it out.

“Look,” the man says. “Look are- are you the real deal?”

Castiel raises his eyebrow.

“Like, not one of those, feel the mother-goddess, get in touch with the root of reality, breathe-in-breathe-out, hippy-dippy Wicca witches, are you?” he spits out.

Castiel shifts, tilting his head at a different angle and squints at him. “I know several Wiccans who would call themselves real witches and I would be inclined to say they were right,” he says.

“Ah...shit,” the guy murmurs. “Looks, I’m sorry. Fuck. Do you know a good pharmacy around here or something-”

“If it’s erectile dysfunction, it’s the lurid red bottle by the door. Ginseng, pine, and pomegranate. It works, if you can keep it down. Ruder men than you have had great success. I’ve heard if you mix it with a Coke it goes down a little easier,” he says. He looks back at his book.

“Do you have anything for skin conditions?” The man blurts. “My brother, he has….something fierce and we’ve tried more or less everything and-”

“Fierce how?” Castiel asks, still reading. “Acne, dry-”  
“Eczema,” he answers. “From Hell.”

Castiel looks up at him. “Come with me,” he says, heading to the back of the shop.

He pulls the curtain aside and gestures. The man follows.

“Your name?” Castiel asks.

“Dean,” he replies. “Smith. Dean Smith.”

“Great,” he answers. “What does your brother’s condition look like? Cracked like a riverbed, little spots, dry and flaky-”

“Yes,” Dean answers. “We’ve looked everything up- trust me, we’re good at research- and he has all of them.”

Castiel looks at him. “What?” he says.

“It’s like...some combination of them or something. I don’t know,” he answers. He still looks so afraid. So defensive. Something about it puts Castiel on edge.

He points to a stool in front of his work station. “Sit, please,” he says. “You’re so tense. You can’t have had a bad experience with a witch before and the whole green skin and warty nose thing is more or less a myth at this point, okay?”

He sits ramrod straight on the stool. Clutches his thigh.

Castiel grabs a couple of stems from his thriving aloe plant. He cuts the thick green exterior and squishes the gel into a bowl. Takes a particularly strong tincture of chamomile and adds a good jot from the bottle. Hands the bowl to Dean. “Stir,” he says. “You’re his brother. Hopefully it’ll make something sympathetic happen. This’ll help soothe and take down some of the inflammation.”

In another bowl (a silver bowl), he adds half a pound of raw honey, unfiltered, from his own hive. “He’s not allergic to bees, is he?”

Dean shakes his head. He keeps stirring.

“Good,” Castiel says. “Honey is a disinfectant. Should kill any bacteria on the surface of his skin. I’m adding some rosemary to this and a soap base. This is a mild detergent. It will work on his skin and his hair.”

He takes the aloe from Dean and gives him the honey mix with a pestle. “Grind this,” he says. “You want it to be a fairly even consistency.”

“Is this all there is to it?” Dean asks. “Honey and rosemary?”

“That’s all that I can explain,” he answers. “That’s what you can do for yourselves.”  
Castiel looks outside. Still raining. Not ideal weather for this at all, but sometimes these things can’t be helped. He grabs a jar and a book of matches. Opens the window, which sits in the wall at chest height and lights a match. Put it in the jar and seals it. Watches all of the air inside burn away as it fills with smoke.

He has filled a jar with a spirit of hunger, a spirit that will bring oxygen close to the skin and eat bacteria and microorganisms. A spirit that will drive away infection. He brings the jar back inside.

He takes another jar and a paint pen. “Don’t scratch, wash, or rub this off,” he says. Dean watches as he writes a huge rune on it, white paint against the clear glass. It glows, very breifly, and Castiel invests into that glow. Feeds energy into it, as much as he can surrender from both himself and the plants in the shop. Leaves and stems and hair color shift, just barely. The lights flicker.

Heal, the jar says.

When Castiel looks up, the man has stopped grinding and looks terrified.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’ll help. That’s the part I can’t explain to you. Are you almost done?” He pants a little. Sways in space and sits down on a stool opposite Dean.

Dean looks at Castiel with a face like thunder. “What did you do?” he asks.

“Nothing you wouldn’t have asked me to,” he answers. Things like this, they always give him a headache. He blinks a few times, clearing away the bright stars in his vision. “It’s okay, really.”

Dean reaches into his coat and pulls out a gun. Points the thing in Castiel’s face. “What did you do?” He asks.

Castiel reaches out, reaches forward, and pushes the gun down. Away.

“That’ll be thirty-three fifty,” he says.

Dean looks at him for a long moment, fear dancing in his green eyes. A tight kind of panic. An incredible terror.

“I can’t shoot lightning out of my hands,” Castiel says. “Trust me. I’d have no business if I could.”

Dean places the gun flat on the table and pulls his wallet out of his coat. Pulls out a fifty and lays it on the bench. “Keep the change,” he mutters.

Castiel looks at Dean again, for a long moment and notices a few things. He notices the way the seams are pulled tight against his shoulder on his jacket and shirt. He notices the worn parts of his pants. He notices the tired quality of his eyes and skin.

“I need to put this in jars,” Castiel says. “I can take care of this. Please, wait for me in the front.”

Dean stands up. Backs out of the room.

Castiel inhales and exhales, keeps breathing until he feels steady enough to get up and move. He runs the pestle through the soap one more time (and focuses on it just enough to tighten it slightly) and scoops it into the jar with the spirit in it. Does the same with the aloe mixture and closes them both tightly. He puts the two into the bag. He looks at the money on his bench.

He thinks about how worn Dean looks.

He sighs, heavily, and slips the bill into the bottom of the bag. He limps out to the front of the store.

“Here,” he says. “If anything gets worse, stop immediately and come see me again. If it gets better, stick with it and come see me when you run out of stuff.”

Dean takes the bag from him. Holds it carefully. Nervously. Looks at him with serious eyes. That expression like thunder. “Thanks,” he says.

“Please leave,” Castiel says.

* * *

 

Dean holds onto the bag for a long time, sitting in the front seat of his car.

The bunker is right outside of his door. He looks at it for a long moment and looks back at the bag.

“Look,” Dean murmurs. “I need a miracle, here.”

He steps out of the car and heads inside.

It’s quiet inside of the bunker. The lights are off. The rain beats against the set-in windows. Thin grey light shows the blurry, vague outline of the furniture and walls.

Dean flicks on a light. Kicks off his shoes and walks to the back, to Sam’s room.

It’s dark in there. The lights are off and the shape of Sam laying on the bed is just visible. No sheet over him. No clothes, just boxers. Chest moving up and down with the effort of breathing. A thin, rattling sound.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean murmurs lowly. “How we doin’?”

There’s a long pause. Arduous. “Hurts,” he exhales.

“Yeah,” Dean soothes. He sits down on the bed and reaches out, helping his brother sit up very slowly. “Hey, yeah. Okay, Sammy, I need you to sit up for me, okay? I need you to get out of bed. I got you some medicine and I need you to come to the bathroom for me, can you do that?”

Sam pants and moves slowly. Arduously. “Okay,” he exhales. “Okay. No lights. No lights.”

His skin isn’t always this bad, but there has been a particularly cruel quality to the winter this year, and it has left his skin a mess. Usually he has one problem or another- inflammation or dryness; redness or cracking; bleeding or swelling. Now, though, he seems to have all of the problems at once. It leaves his skin hot and sensitive, damp with plasma or blood in some places, dry and rough in others. All of it feels inflamed but it’s really at it worse on his chest, his neck, his hands, his cheeks, the fronts of his legs. It started out badly enough but it’s only gotten worse until yesterday morning when Sam refused to get out of bed. Refused to turn on the lights.

He doesn’t like to see himself like this. Never.

Dean turns the water to just lukewarm, leaving the door open to let just enough light in that he can see. He guides Sam in and grabs the jar with the soap in it, the one that doesn’t have the paint in it. He scoops out a handful of it and hands it to Sam. “Here,” he says. “Try this. Should help.”

Sam’s hand takes the soap and retreats back into the shower, behind the pulled curtain.

“I’m going to change your sheets, okay? When you get out, I’ve got lotion for you to use, too,” Dean calls and slinks out.

He hears a happy sounding hum from inside the shower.

Dean hopes fervently, brightly, that this was worth his fifty bucks.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Dean leaves his shop and Castiel wobbles to the door and locks it. Shuts the blind and walks very carefully upstairs to his apartment. He owns the building, inheriting it after his mother passed. It’s a good thing on days like this. Casting always leaves him shaky and dizzy, and the only thing to fix it is a good long sleep.

He shuffles up the stairs and into his bedroom, the sound of the rain making the space close and safe. He wills the fire downstairs to come to the upstairs hearth and it obeys fairly quickly. Some magic comes easier than others, and the simple nature of raw elements has always been natural to him. Castiel can make it rain or make it stop as easily as he can run a mile. He can light fires, he can blow wind through a space. Other magics he has to work a little harder on- he’ll never be able to charm animals to speak the languages of men, so he talks to them in a thick, human accent. He can’t spin clothes from thin air. He can’t will objects to move when they don’t want to. Can’t convince locked doors that aren’t his own locks to jimmy open. Runes he is good at, but they’re exhausting. They demand personal energy, invested permanently. A gift.

Castiel has disseminated his energy across the city, in healing jars like the one he made this afternoon and snow charms and memory aides and worry-stones. He could keep all his energy to himself and live a long, long time, like his grandmother who held on for nearly three hundred years, or he could give it away.

Castiel doesn’t know anyone he would live that long for, but he knows plenty of people who could do better things with this energy inside of him than he could, and he’s okay with that.

His bed is old but thick and heavy and warm. His quilt was handmade, his blanket is an heirloom. He pulls off his clothes lazily while his room warms up and falls asleep heavily.

He dreams no dreams that night.

* * *

 

Sam goes to get coffee, by himself, three weeks later.

The soap and the lotion, they’re working. First the deep lesions healed and then the cracks and then the irritation was soothed and the acne cleared up and for the first time in years Sam looks healthy and normal. For the first time since Dean went and got him from Stanford and brought him back into this life.

Sam had been sensitive as a kid, too. He’d get rashes, he’d had rough acne, but it hadn’t ever been as bad as it got after Jess’s death. A perfect storm of stress and sleeplessness and hotel room mold. Dean hoped it would go away when they settled into the bunker, part of why it was such a godsend.

Sam doesn’t look like he’s suffering, and if that means he feels well enough to go out and get some coffee, then Dean is more than willing to give him his keys and hang out around the house alone for a few hours.

It is an enormous weight off his mind that they’ve found something that will help.

Dean found the fifty in the bottom of the bag that night and he’s held onto it since. He’s not sure why the guy slid it back into the bag, but it’s there and he has it. It sits on his desk in his room, under a battered old copy of Cat’s Cradle. It sits there like an accusation, a reminder of what he did.

He’s not proud of pulling the gun on the guy, but thing is, he’s had more than enough brushes with bad magic to know that he has to be careful. That things can be dangerous so quickly, out of his control faster than his heart can beat. And there was something about the way he made it glow; something about the way it changed that scared him so completely.

Dean holds the image of the guy pushing his gun down bright in his mind. His confidence. His faith.

“Shit,” Dean murmurs. It’s not the first time he’s thought through what happened and what he did.

He hopes Sam gets back soon. He needs to drive back out to that shop.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Two weeks later, the rain disappears and Castiel is cleaning out the ashes from his fireplace. He will use them to make lye, and use the lye to make soap. The soap he can charm however he wishes- something about buying it has always felt wrong to him. It is not a difficult process, just time consuming. That’s okay, though. That’s how he lives his life.

He dumps the ash in the container with the ashes from the other fireplaces and the ashes brought to him by customers. It is all brilliant white- hot, long burning fires guaranteed by an charm Castiel gave them.

Spring has finally come back and his fireplace will not be needed for many more months. He will repair the bricks and mortar and check the flue in this, the off season.

Outside, the crocuses and daffodils have come up. Soon, the trees will bud and blossom. The grass has come back alive, tender green coming up out of the earth. The air is cool but bright. Castiel opens the windows in the store and wears a light sweater. Everything is fresh and clean again.

He’s sweeping and working when the bell over the door rings behind him.

“One minute!” He calls brightly. “I’ve made something of a mess with these ashes, you’ll have to forgive me. Just a moment, I’ll wash my hands and be right with you.”

He dashes to the washroom just adjacent to the high, library shelf full of terrariums made to invite harmony and fresh air and joy into spaces.

When he comes back out, drying his hands, there’s the man with the sick brother from weeks ago- Dean.

Castiel stumbles a little bit and says, “Oh, goodness.”

“Wow,” he says, settling against his heavy desk. “I’m sorry, I’m rather overwhelmed, I hadn’t been expecting to see you again.”

Dean blushes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t on my best behavior. I was rude to you and that’s not...look, I left my guns at home, okay?”

Dean looks so flustered, so earnest, standing there with a brown paper package in his hand. Flushed bright face and anxious voice.

Castiel looks at him a long, long time. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he finally asks.

Dean smiles a little. “Uh, yeah,” he answers. “That would be...great. Yeah.”

“Good,” Castiel answers. “Turn the sign on the door, I’m not expecting anyone today anyway. Come on back to the work room, I’ll get a pot together.”

His bare feet slide across the wood of the floor as he pulls open drawers. Pulls out a pile of dried tea leaves from one and hops from the other. Grabs lemongrass and lemonbalm from the garden. He folds the lemongrass into a knot and set it at the very bottom of the tea pot. Places lemonbalm in with the tea leaves, with rind from this morning’s orange. A few hops. Dean doesn’t look like much of a tea drinker to begin with, and while he might not like the taste, the hops and lemonbalm will at least put him at ease, and the orange and lemongrass with help with the sinus infection that’s threatening to develop from his seasonal allergies. Pours warm water from this morning’s kettle (asked to heat a little more) and lets it steep.

Dean walks uneasily into the back room.

“It looks different in the spring,” he says.

“I can only keep so many things alive at once,” Castiel answers. “Some things are getting dried and others are getting planted or replaced. I’ll have basil in here in a few days or so. The mint usually holds up from winter through spring and summer, so that’s nice. Good to have lots of that around, at any rate. Mrs. Johanssen needs it for her tea every week and no one else in the city has just the right breed for her nausea as she goes through her chemo.”

“Chemo?” Dean asks, frowning. “Can’t you just...magic her better?”

Castiel shrugs. Pulls out two chipped mugs. “She hasn’t asked,” he says. “I can’t give what they don’t ask of me. That’s one of the rules.”

“Rules?” Dean asks. He settles down onto the stool.

“Don’t give what they don’t ask for, make sure they know what they’re asking for, do no harm, cause no unnecessary pain, don’t bite off more than you can chew,” he explains.

“I didn’t know there were rules,” Dean says.

“There are rules to all things,” Castiel answers. He pulls out the honey and leaves a generous pile of it in the bottom of Dean’s mug. “I would not go about doing magic people had not asked for. That’s anarchy- not enchantment. Evil.”

The tea is fragrant as it is poured into the cup. Warm and bright and sweet. “Drink,” Castiel says. “It’s good for you.”

“Is it magic?” Dean asks.

“No,” Castiel replies. “Just thought out. I don’t actually do that much magic, really. I just remember the old things. The hidden ways. Some of them do remarkable good and no one need charm anything.”

Dean takes a sip of it. He barely hides a grimace, which makes Castiel smile into his own mug of tea. He looks up at Castiel, green eyes like the leaves budding outside. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Dean murmurs.

“Your brother’s soap ran out?” Castiel says.

Dean smiles. “Nah,” he says. “It’s working though. He hasn’t been this comfortable in years. Most of it’s cleared up and even some of his scars have faded off. He even goes out now and no one stares at him or anything. It’s great.” He turns his mug in his hands, the surface of the liquid swirling a little. “I wanted to apologize. I came into your store and I was so worried that it would all go wrong and I pulled a gun on you and that wasn’t alright. That wasn’t an okay thing to do. You didn’t know about-” he gestures, incoherently, at the air. “About all of my damage. And I just wanted to say sorry. Innocent until proven guilty, yeah?”

Castiel smiles at him. “I appreciate that,” he says. “That’s kind of you. Your gun was hardly the worst I’ve encountered here.”  
“Really?” Dean blurts. “What the hell-”

“It was a long time ago,” Castiel says. “They didn’t know better.”

“Anyway,” Dean says, standing up, “I just wanted to drop this off, as my thanks. And tell you I’ll probably be in next week for more goop for Sam.” He lays the package on the table. “You’re a good guy. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.”

Castiel smiles at him. He rotates his finger over his own cup of tea, stirring it gently.

“I’ll see myself out,” he says, and leaves. The bell rings as he opens the door.

Castiel gingerly opens the package and almost cackles aloud at it.

Bound in leather, with yellowing pages.

Malleus Maleficarum, on his table. The Hammer of Witches.


	4. Chapter 4

When Dean gets home, Sam is standing in the kitchen, cooking, with some terrible music playing in the background.

He’s sliced up onions and red bell peppers, run the strings from sugar peas and boiled rice. He does this thing with coconut milk and fish sauce and shrimp that he picked up from someone at Stanford that’s amazing. More than anything, though, Dean’s just glad he’s feeling up to cooking.

“Smells great,” Dean says, walking in. “Except for the fish sauce, though. That smells like dogshit.”

“Yeah, but it tastes like fucking beef and you know it,” Sam answers, frying garlic and ginger in the oil. The air turns spicy and hot in the room and Sam fishes the aromatics out so he can add the onions and peppers to the seasoned oil. “Where were you, anyway? I was going to ask you to pick up some cilantro but you were gone.”

“Ran an errand,” Dean answers, non-commitally. “Don’t worry about it. Is that soap still working for you?”

Sam nods, his hair flopping into his face. “Yeah,” he replies. “Really well. I’ve still got a few patches on my chest that don’t want to clear up but for the most part, it’s great.” He adds a jot of fish sauce to the pan and the air grows fragrant. Steam billows up from the pan and he covers it briefly. The sound lowers noticeably. “I’m probably going to run out in about a week, though. If you tell me where you got it, I could pick some up after dinner.”

Dean feels the blood rush to his face and he looks away. “It’s some weird little boutique out in the city,” he says, avoiding Sam’s face. He reaches in the fridge and grabs a jug of milk. Reaches for a glass. “They keep weird hours. I’ll swing through tomorrow and grab some more for you. Don’t worry about it.”

Sam looks at him with a raised eyebrow for a long moment. Nods and says, “Okay. Sure.” He goes back to tossing the vegetables in the pan, pulling them out to add new oil and the shrimp.

Dean pours a glass of the milk.

“What are you up to?” Sam asks.

“Me? What makes you think I’m up to something?” Dean replies. Screws the lid back on. Takes a sip.

“Because that’s buttermilk,” Sam answers, “and you’re so intent on not looking at me that you completely failed to realize it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam stands in the shower, washing his hair.

It's nice to take showers that are more than lukewarm again. It's nice to run his hands across his scalp and not run into lesions, sticky with dried plasma. It's nice to feel normal, to look normal. The soap feels good across his skin and the lotion afterwards feels even better.

It's all gotten better, and that means he can actually go _outside_.

He's not sure where Dean picked it up, but it makes him feel like a real person. And as long as it's not the product of some deal with the devil, he's cool with it.

Sam finishes showering and climbs out. Dries off and smears the gel-like lotion over his chest, arms, leg and face. It feels cool and clean. Doesn't sit on top of his skin oily and greasy, just makes him smell a little bit like socks.

He just has a few red patches he or there instead of most of him feeling rubbed raw and painful.

 

* * *

Castiel wakes up the next morning and stretches long and tall, bending forward into a deep toe touch and coming up to graze the ceiling of the attic where he sleeps with his fingertips. Crystals hang from his ceiling and scatter rainbow light over the wooden surfaces of the room. They don't do that much, actually, but they look nice. Make him feel good about the space where he lives.

Half of the magic, really.

He washes his face and runs his fingers through his hair.  Puts on his clothes and walks down the stairs to the store.

He hasn't had the open sign turned over for ten minutes when a few people come in.

They're tall men in suits. Serious faces. They look a little incredulous, but not in a good way.

Castiel knows the different kinds of people who come in here. He knows true believers and crystal warriors and people looking for a fun palm reading. He also knows these people.

These people are here to make fun of him.

"Hi," one of them says. "We're looking for the owner of the building?"

Castiel smiles at hm. "What can I do for you?"

The man has a week chin and eyes that bulge a little bit. He's balding. Aging. He raises an eyebrow at Castiel. "Really?" He asks. "Mr. Novak? Castiel?"  
He nods. "Yes, that's me," he answers. "May I help you?"

The man frowns. "Of course," he says. "My name is Zachariah, Zachariah Fuller. My associates and I, we represent Sandover Developments. We're looking to put new-"

"I'm not for sale," Castiel interrupts. "Is there anything else I could help you with today?"

The man, Zachariah, he pauses. "Do you have a father I could speak to? A Castiel Novak senior?"

Castiel frowns again. "No," he says. "No, it was just Mother and I, and now it's just me."

"Yes, the first owner," he says. "She bought the building in 1930."

"Yes," Castiel answers.

"And ownership passed to you in 1970," he says.

Castiel nods.

Zachariah smiles. There is no joy nor humor in it. "So you expect me to believe that you are actually-"

"Ninety," Castiel says, blushing a little. "Ninety one this year."

Zachariah smiles again. Heads to the door with the men he came in with. "We'll be back," he says.

They leave, as soon as they came in.

Castiel watches them leave.

He knows that this isn't going to be good.

The crystals turn a little faster in the light. Anxiously.

This isn't good at _all._  


 


	6. Chapter 6

Three women come in at about four in the afternoon looking for a tea leaf reading. They leave after Castiel breaks the third cup of tea in his hands, after a fire lights spontaneously in the fireplace and a crystal spins off of a string in the window and drives itself half an inch into the wall. He apologizes profusely; they pay half price and leave giggling, thanking him for a good show.

Ever since the real estate man and his goons came by, he's felt tense, nervous. Every day of the ninety-one years he's been alive weighs on him suddenly- he feels them.

He takes a deep, deep breath. He lets it go slowly. The door locks, the blinds draw downward, and every candle in his workroom lights itself on.

The marble worktop of his table is cool under his hands. He can feel the stone of it leaching the warmth out of his hands, pulling his anxiety with it.

He inhales, long and deep. He exhales. The electric lights switch off, leaving the room in glow of the late afternoon sunlight and the beeswax candles. The smell makes him think of his apiary and it settles something warm inside of him. Something comforting and soft. Orderly.

Since he's raised his bees, they've never doubted him or questioned him. He doesn't smoke them, they know him. He's split the hive into new ones a few times, he's seen Queens come and go. They know him. He knows them.

He inhales again and he feels the walls of the building shudder around the force of it.

He exhales again and it all settles back into place.

With his eyes closed, he's awash in a sea of velvet darkness.

  
_Castiel,_ he hears a voice say, a voice he knows but shouldn't be there, shouldn't be so deep inside of him.

He opens his eyes and stands up. He presses him thumb into the center point on his forehead and breathes.

None of this is good.

None of this can lead anywhere good.

When he turns around, he sighs heavily.

Every drawer in his catalog of dried herbs and spices is flung open, and every plant in the greenhouse has shifted to grow closer to him.

He shuts his drawers. He touches his plants gently (they like the attention).

He walks upstairs to his bedroom to make himself a cup of tea.

* * *

Sam's doing well for a few more days and then he picks up one or two zits, and then he has a dry patch on his arm, and then he has a low day when everything hurts and he's sore and it's suddenly so _scary_. It's worse than if he'd never gotten better at all.

Dean comes softly into his bedroom with a bowl of tomato-rice soup and a pitcher full of water.

"Hey," he says softly, "how you doing Sammy?"

Sam opens his eyes from where he's laying. He smiles a little. "Jesus, Dean, I'm having a rough day, I'm not dying," he laughs, quietly.

"Yeah, whatever," Dean replies, "you know you love it when I baby you."

Sam sits up slowly, and his face and arms are bright red- they look inflamed and itchy. He has bandaids on his fingertips- something to prevent him from scratching. "Seriously, it's fine," he says. "I'm just-"

"Is the soap not working?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs. "I guess?" He answers. "I'm getting kind of low on it and the lotion."

"Low?" Dean asks, handing his brother the soup. He'd forgotten, and he feels a rush of warm guilt. "Low or out?"

Sam looks away from him. "I only have about a day's left. It worked for a while at least."  
Dean frowns. "Eat some soup," he says. "Drink some water, get some rest. I'll be home soon."

Sam frowns. "Dean, don't-"

"No, I'll talk to the guy," he says. "You need more anyway; I'll talk to him about maybe making it work a little better. It's fine."  
"No, Dean, I'm fine- I'm used to it-"

Dean gets up from the bed. "You shouldn't _have_ to be used to it," he says. "I'll go talk to the people at the shop. It'll be fine."

Sam smiles at him, weakly, not unkindly.

Dean grabs the jars out of the bathroom and his keys. He drives back to the city.

* * *

The shop is closed, but Dean knocks on the glass anyway. He doesn't have high hopes, but he doesn't want to go back with empty hands.

He looks up at the old, rickety building- there are a few empty store fronts around but not much else. Some empty lots.

"Castiel," he murmurs.

The crystals hanging in front of the drawn blinds spin quickly on their strings.

He stands there for a few minutes and then sighs. He turns to walk away when he hears a small bell ring and that low, gruff voice say, "I cam all the way downstairs for you; the least you could do is tell me why you came."  
He turns around and smiles, and he knows something is _wrong_.

"Whoah, man, you okay? You don't look like you're feeling great," he says.

Maybe Dean didn't remember him correctly, maybe it's the light of the afternoon, but the guy, Castiel, he looks so much _older_ all of the sudden. The other day, he looked like he couldn't be a day over twenty five. Today, though, he looks like he's well into his forties, pushing fifty. His hair has lost that dark, shining quality- it looks ashy and grey at his temples. And Dean would have sworn that he didn't have those kind of wrinkles around his eyes or that stretched, pained feeling to his face and body.

Castiel smiles briefly and he runs his hands through his hair. "I'm fine," he says. "Just a little stressed. What do you need help with?"

"My brother, he's um, he's run out," he replies. "And it's stopped working so well."

Castiel frowns. "Really?" he says. "That's...that's odd." He gestures inside of the shop with a hand that has the knuckles and bones in his hand in sharper relief than Dean recalled. "Come on in."

* * *

Castiel invites Dean in and shuts the door after him.

"What do you mean, it's stopped working so great?" He asks.

Dean frowns, looking around the shop as Castiel guides them to the backroom.

"He had a flare up," Dean says. "Real bad. Acne, inflammation, itching, everything."

"Itching?" Castiel asks, pulling lavender out of a drawer. He grabs the chamomile and oatmeal as well.

"Yeah," Dean replies. He sits down near at the worktop. "Real bad this time around. He's got bandaids on his fingertips so he doesn't scratch and get his infections."

Castiel frowns a moment. "How old is he?" He asks.

"25," Dean replies. "Four years younger than me."

Castiel looks over his shoulder, his hands full of herbs and soap base. "You're twenty-nine?" He asks.

Dean smiles. "What can I say, good genes," he laughs.

Castiel smiles back at him. "Okay," he says. "Let me see those jars."

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

The rune has rubbed partially off of one of the jars but it's still charged, still active with that thing that wants to rush out and soothe and heal. The spirit is still bound tight to the other one. He frowns. His guess was that the magic had worn away and that was what had stopped it from working.

"How long has your brother's flare up been going on?" He asks. He throws some ground oatmeal into a bowl with tincture of chamomile and a jot of lavender essence.

"A few days?" Dean answers from the table. "Maybe a week?"

There's a couple of days left of both the soap and the lotion.

Castiel's never run into something that's stopped working after a while. It's not supposed to do that.

He hands Dean a spoon made in wood and silver- willow wood that lends that something anti-inflammatory of aspirin, silver as that something purifying, something that cleans- and the bowl.

"Work this together until I find the right oil base," he says.

Coconut oil would be too heavy, at least if he worked in all coconut oil. He frowns.

"This looks like different stuff than last time," Dean says. "Smells different."

"If the old formula didn't work, we need to try something else," he says. "He's not allergic to anything, is he? Nuts?"

"Nah," Dean answers. "I mean, besides basically...basically fucking everything." He huffs a short laugh. "Honestly, try anything, you couldn't make it worse."

Castiel pulls the cocoa butter and the almond oil. He adds a measure of both to the bowl Dean's working. "This would be for once a day," he says. "It's heavier than what I made for him last time."

He picks up the jar with the rune and grabs a dried water lily leaf. He places it inside and burns it, looks at the way the smoke settles.

Flexible, wet, sturdy, he thinks. A new spirit to it, something secondary and real.

He sets the jar next to the bowl Dean is working and tries to think of how to fix the soap.

 

* * *

Castiel moves easily, naturally around his workshop, picking up spices and herbs and plant material and oils. Dean just sits at his work table and pushes the mixture in the bowl back and forth with the spoon as it gradually blends and lumps together.

"Is it supposed to be this...chunky?" Dean asks after a few minutes.

Castiel turns and looks at him, eyebrows raised. "Oh," he says, slightly surprised. "No," he answers. He frowns and pulls something from a shelf, a clear liquid, and pours it in.

"Try it now," he says.

"Are you alright?" Dean asks. "You seem a little uh," _older_ , he thinks, "distracted."

"Mmm?" Castiel says, musical and curious. "Sorry, I had a visit this morning and it didn't...there's trouble coming down the pipes but it's nothing I haven't had to handle before, I'm just going to have to pack up and move."

"Move?" Dean asks, panicked. He misses the bowl with the spoon and digs it viciously, slipping, into the marble of the table. "Where would you go?"

Castiel shrugs. "Wherever there's room. It's nothing I haven't done before. I just have to find an empty space and set up."

Dean picks up the spoon like nothing happened, trying to be nonchalant. "So not out of the city, then?"

 

Castiel smiles a little and it crinkles the edges of his bright blue eye. "No," he says. "I shouldn't be going that far. I don't think I could stretch the spell that far right now."

"Spell?" Dean asks.

Castiel takes another bowl and fills it with something that smell sharp and clear. He adds another liquid, this one a dark, oily amber color. He adds a sprig of rosemary and a large quantity of white goo. He pushes it towards Dean with a wooden spoon and takes the bowl full of the lotion back. He runs the silver spoon through it a few times and something to the mixture changes- it becomes a little thicker, a little more...creamy.

"Have you ever really...really _looked_ at the outside of this building?" He asks.

Dean shakes his head. "No?"

Castiel smiles again, a little smugly. "Good," he says. "Let me put this back in the jar while you finish blending the soap."

There's the smell of electricity and air that there was last time as Castiel works, doing that thing he can't explain to Dean.

He works quickly and soon enough both the soap and lotion are done. He puts both of the jars in a bag and hands them to Dean, who fishes a fifty out of his wallet.

"I want you to actually take this," he says, firmly, and Castiel laughs.

"I will," he says. "I swear." He yawns a little, looks even more worn than when Dean got here.

"Hey," Dean asks, "This isn't taking too much...out of you?"

Castiel shakes his head, yawning into his shoulder. "No, I promise," he answers and then pauses. He wanders to a shelf, noticing a mirror for the first time.

"Oh dear," he murmurs. "Oh, I must have alarmed you terribly," he laughs, and when he turns back around, he looks just like he did when Dean first saw him. The grey is gone from his hair. The wrinkles are gone from his face, the wiry and worn quality has dissipated a little. He just looks tired. He looks young, in his mid-twenties, and tired.

He looks a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry, when I'm feeling anxious, it likes to creep away," he says, as if that somehow explains something.

Dean frowns. "What creeps away?"

Castiel gestures vaguely and the motion makes windchimes ring in the back. "Being anxious makes my aura...unpredictable. Makes it hard to make me look like myself," he says.

Dean frowns. "Okay," he murmurs, like maybe he understands. "And if your aura is screwed up, you look old?"

Castiel shrugs. "More or less," he says. He smiles, wearily. "I should get some rest, though, that will help."

"Oh, shit," Dean says. "Yeah, I'll get- I'll get out of your hair." He backs up into a shelf and swears and Castiel laughs a little bit, like the sound of the chimes.

"I'll see you out," he says, and they walk to the front door.

He opens it and Dean steps through.

He looks at Castiel and Castiel smiles.

"Let me know if that works. If it wears off like the other one, let me know. Bring him by," he says.

Dean nods. "Thanks," he says.

Castiel shuts the door and Dean drives home.

His money is in the bottom of the bag like it was the first time he came here.

He sighs heavily.

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Castiel climbs up the stairs and lays down, face first, in his bed. He groans, loudly, completely exhausted.

He hadn't realized how worried the developers had made him- worried enough to strip away the magic he wears to look like he's always looked.

He'll never really look his age. His mother and grandmother both passed looking not a day over fifty, but when he's worried or stressed, the greys creep into his hair and his wrinkles pop up.  It doesn't happen very often at all, but when it does he usually notices. He's usually centered well enough to tell.

He'll shutter the shop for a few days to rest up and have energy to move the house. He has to be out of here before they bring surveyors or begin demoltion- before they learn or demand for the deed.

After all, the original bricks that were this building were long ago torn away and ground into dust, back in the old country. A silent, unremembered casualty of a little discussed war.

He falls asleep in his clothes.

* * *

 

Sam is sitting on the couch in an old sweatshirt, eating oatmeal, when Dean gets home.

Sam eats BRAT when his skin flares up- bananas, rice, applesauce, toast. He adds oatmeal and as much by way of fruits and vegetables he can stand but nothing fried, not much oil, no meat, not a lot of dairy.

Dean's argued with him about it- about his body needing any kind of nutrition it can get, he'll be fine, he really shouldn't cut meat.

Sam just shakes his head and keeps eating his rabbit food.

Dean tosses him the bag and Sam catches it, frowning.

"This is different," he says, looking in.

"Yeah," Dean answers. "The guy, he said this might work better. Only use the thick stuff once a day, though. It's way heavier."

Sam opens a jar and sniffs at it. He grabs his lunch and smells it.

He frowns again.

"Thanks," he says.

Dean nods. "No problem. Hey, what do you know about witches?"

Sam drops the bag, a heavy sound on the floor. "You didn't get this from a witch, Dean, did you?" He asks, sounding panicked.

"No!" Dean answers. "I mean- okay, so-"

"You went to a witch!" Sam cries out. "What- what the hell, Dean? How do we know what's in that bag won't kill me or won't make it all worse?"

"Because I didn't go there for a spell or for witchcraft, I went because everyone in the area said he was the best! Online reviews and stuff, okay?" He pauses. He sighs. "Sam, I can't- I can't just sit here and watch you suffer. And nothing we were doing was working."

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. Closes his eyes. "This isn't working either," he murmurs.

"It was damn more effective than anything else we had been doing!" Dean exclaims. "And I didn’t really know for sure that he was a witch, okay? I went armed and- look, he’s a good guy, okay? Really.”

Sam looks at him. He looks tired. Worn thin in a way he hasn’t in weeks. “Stuff like this, it always take back more than it gives,” he murmurs. “That’s magic, okay, that’s what we know. What we’ve always known.”

He puts the bag on the table. He stands. “I can’t take this. I can’t.”

He walks away.

Dean stands in the room, empty, and he feels a kind of familiar ache inside of him. A kind of hopelessness he knows so well.

“Sam,” he says to the empty room, “you’re not doing this alone.”

* * *

 

Castiel wakes up the next morning and he knows something is wrong. He still feels tired. Violently exhausted.

It takes all of his energy to just climb out of bed. He slinks to his kitchen and brews himself a cup of tea. He comes down the stairs to the shop to water his plants and he drops the teacup.

His garden.

“No,” he gasps. “No, no, no.”

He steps forward and the leaves of what had been a mint plant crumble under his fingertips. The dead, brown branches of what had been a tree planted by his great grandmother shake over his head, bare. The rosemary, taken from a bush in Jerusalem before its sack by the French invaders, is shriveled. The basil is dust. The flowers have turned completely brown, lost of all color and life. The soil is grey. The moss, even the moss is gone.

It’s all dead.

It spreads before him, decimated and brown- completely ruined.

“No,” he repeats. “Please. Please, why- why?”

The garden is so old. Older than he is. It is his birthright, a gift to him from the hard women and ancestors before him. And it has died under his watch. Under his care.

He was not good enough to make it live.

He falls to his knees, staring emptily at it. At all of the death. All of the decay.

Once, when he was a child, a boy threw a rock at him at school. Had called him a name and threw his books on the ground and kicked him. Had torn the fine clothes his mother had sewn for him.

He ran home, here, as fast as he could and he talked to his mother, in the fast Russian that had been the tongue of his childhood, he cried, he screamed.

And she had pet his hair and held him and taken him to the garden and showed him the order and nature and system of all things.

The peace she had placed here, now it is dead.

All that remains inside of him is a bruise on his cheek from a hard, thrown stone.

He feels so small.

For the first time in such a long time, Castiel feels helpless to the systems of the world around him- disconnected and isolated and painfully alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me so damn long to update; I've had a lot going on.


	9. Chapter 9

It only gets worse over the next few days. Sam goes back to his routine of lukewarm showers and mild, clear soaps. BRAT diet and mild, dark greens and oatmeal and almonds. Nothing gets better, though- his skin just turns redder and drier and flakier and more cracked and broken and angry. The silence between them grows and grows, conspicuous and hideous.

Dean _hates_ it.

"Sam," he says, " _please_."

He still has the soaps and lotion in his room, unopened.

Sam's mouth twists into a raw sneer and he turns away. Settles deeper into the couch and pulls his book closer.

"You're acting like a goddamn _child_ ," he barks. "Please, Sam, it'll _help_ you. Let me fucking _help_ you!"

"Let me make my decision!" Sam shouts back. "We've both dealt with witches before- we both know what they do, we both know that there aren't _good_ witches-"

"It's different, Sam-"

"It's _never_ different," he interrupts. "Look, just...just let me make my choices, okay? Let me live with them."

Dean sighs, heavily. "Sam, you're not the only one who lives with your choices," he murmurs. "You're not an island."

"I'm also my own person, Dean," he says.

Dean stands there, in the room with the conversation between them, and then he turns around and leaves, grabbing his keys.

He drives, absently.

* * *

All of the plants are dead. All of the soil is dead. The spiders and beetles and flies that hung around the shop are all dead. The silver has all tarnished, the wooden bowls and spoons have cracked and rotted. The floors have warped, the glass has cracked, the bottles unsealed- it's all _gone_. It's not just the garden, it's _everything._  


Castiel has been sifting through the wreckage of it all, little by little. It's hard to do- harder than anything he's done since he buried his mother. He has the closed sign on the door and he pulls his magic away from his windcharms (dirty, cracked, chipped, and broken) and his fireplaces (anemic, clogged, asthmatic, empty).

He's so tired, and the going is slow.

He's sweeping the dusty, broken remains of his bathbombs (for arthritic joints on a cruel day) out of the door when a long black car pulls out in front of the shop and Dean climbs out.

He looks tired. Rumpled. Upset.

"You've got to start taking my money," he grumbles, pulling out his wallet.

Castiel shakes his head. "Really," he says, "I can't."

Dean sighs, exasperated. "Then can you fuckin' let me buy you a cup of coffee or something?" he sighs out. "Shit, man."

Castiel sighs out a brief laugh at that. He looks backwards into his desolate shop.

Nothing could possibly get any more dead while he's away.

"Hey," Dean says, "you okay? You seem kinda...grey."

Castiel stows his broom just inside the doorway and turns the lock. He steps outside. "I'd love to get a cup of coffee. Or something," he answers.

Dean nods. "Get in the car," he says. "I know a place. Little ways out- you think you have the time?"

Castiel nods. "I think I have the time."

He settles into the passenger seat of the car, and Dean starts the ignition and they drive away.

* * *

Castiel looks worse than he did a few days ago. He doesn't look old, like he has aged, he looks _grey_. Not paled; instead like the sun somehow shies away from him instead of the other way around. His hair looks lank, greasy. Heavy bags hang under his eyes. His clothes seem to overwhelm his body, his shape.

Small and frail and fragile.

"Is this another one of those, uh, magic things?" Dean asks, gesturing loosely around his own face.

"Pardon?" Castiel asks.

Dean taps the rearview mirror, positions it so Castiel can see himself in it.

"Oh," he says, sounding slightly startled. "Oh, goodness, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" His voice cracks suddenly. "I didn't-"

"Hey," Dean says softly. "Hey, don't worry about it, you just look a little...upset."

Castiel settles deeply in the seat. The city bleeds away a little, to a highway.

"I've had a rough week," he answers. He clears his throat, looking out on the highway. "It- it... _died_." He says, gesturing loosely.

"What died?" Dean asks. "Your cat? What's up?"

Castiel huffs a laugh again, one completely lacking humor or warmth. "The shop- the shop _died_."

 Dean turns the words over in his mind a few times. Cars speed past them, eager to get back to their suburban homes.

Silence sits between them for a solid minute before Castiel says, "Can you keep a...a secret?" His voice is soft. "A little more than a secret, really- can you keep a burden?"

Dean frowns a moment and looks over at Castiel. His blue eyes gaze out onto the road.

He nods. Looks back on the road himself.

"My mother had a great gift," Castiel says. He speaks barely over a murmur. "My mother saw through time. Backwards. Forwards. Present. She could see it all. And in 1859, she saw two things. Two things that might be."

He pauses for a long moment. "She saw the violence coming. The hands of the tsar and then the hands of the soviets. She knew...she knew that if her king did not kill her, the man who took his throne in the name of the people would, in the name of a collective. Mother's village- mother's village believed that the _gift_ , that witchcraft, is service. It is something provided to you by God to distribute into your home. To _leave_ and take your gift elsewhere is a _sin_ , one worthy of...terrible punishment."

He pauses again, as if trying to find the right words. "Mother saw two things- she could stay. She would have a daughter with her husband. She would be...powerful. More powerful than any other witch the village had ever seen. She would burn brightly, she would make miracles. She would heal the sick and the tired, she would bring joy where she stepped, she would bring love to every breath of our people. And when the Nazis came, she would die in a camp." He swallows. Fiddles absently with the edge of his sweater. A crucifix on Dean's dash board spins, almost apologetically. "Or she could go. Her child, maybe would not be magic at all. Ordinary. But the child would _live."_ His eyes flicker upward, towards Dean. "So she had to decide- did she have a greater obligation to the village that raised her and reared her and gave her these gifts, or did she have a greater obligation to a possibility?"

Dean looks at Castiel. Really _looks_ at him for a moment.

"She performed an illegal spell- one that they would have killed her for performing. She picked up the hearth of her house- the roots of her garden put in by her mother and her mother before her and her mother before her yet- going back to Babas in the time before Tsars. She picked up the walls and the chests and the stove and the chimney- she picked it all up and packed it into a bag. And she carried it as far away as she could imagine. America. The new world."

He takes a shuddering breath suddenly, as if barely holding something in. "That shop- that shop was the hearth of my mother and my babas before her. It was the one thing we had that tied us back to home. When we remembered, we remembered them in the fires of our shop, our home. When we mourned, it was there. When the neighborhoods didn't need us any more, we pulled it back away and stuffed it in a new building- like a tent. And I...." he flexes his hands open and closed. He looks at Dean. "I _killed it_. I wasn't worthy. I wasn't the sacrifice my mother made. It wasn't- I killed it. I killed our memory and I killed what had sustained and held together so many people for so long."

His voice is barely a whisper.

"That is my secret," he says. "That is my life. I am the lesser of two and a failure, a killer of my people and memory. I was not worth her sacrifices- and there were so many."

He pauses. Pulls his knees up into the seat and hugs his legs to his chest. "I have never told it to anyone. And if you wanted it, you now have great power over me."

It's a lot to take in, Dean realizes. It's a lot to say.

"You said that it had been there for a long time?" Dean asks, finally.

Castiel nods.

"My mom," Dean says, "she died in a fire. I was four. The fire, it uh...wasn't right. And Dad _knew_ it. And he spent his life hunting those things that weren't right. Lot of people with gifts like yours, doing things that weren't...services, I guess. One of those kind of people killed my mom." He exits the highway, to a smaller road. "I didn't grow up somewhere like your shop. I mean, as far as roots go, mine extend to this car and that's about it." The asphalt isn't as well cared for here, cracked in some places. The grey color of age and use. "I can't _imagine_ what your loss feels like, man," he says. "But I don't think it was your fault. I saw you in that place and man, you...you played it like an orchestra." He sighs. Glances over at Castiel, who still looks so tired and grey and stricken. "Let me get you something a little more substantial than coffee. You eat meat, right?"

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

Castiel settles into the booth gently, Dean across from him. Dean’s green eyes are ringed heavily, he notices. His hair looks greasy and unwashed and he looks a little pale with sleeplessness.

“Are you okay?” Castiel asks.

Dean shrugs. “I’ve been better,” he answers. “I’ll be okay, though. I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

Castiel pulls his arms around himself a little guiltily. “I didn’t mean to monopolize,” he says softly. “If you’re having problems-”

“My little brother is stubborn and he’s letting himself suffer instead of doing something he knows will help,” he interrupts. “It’s shitty, but it’s not that big a deal. It sounds like you’ve been having a shittier few days. A much- much shittier few days.” He smiles a little, barely quirking the edge of his mouth. “I say I help you eat your problems for a little while, okay?”

Castiel smiles back at him a little bit. “What’s good here?” he asks. “I don’t eat out much.”

“Everything, really,” Dean answers. “I like the burgers but they also have pretty good pierogi and sausage and when Sam comes he usually get a mushroom omelette and toast.”

Castiel looks at the menu and blushes. “These prices,” he murmurs. “I haven’t been out to eat since the seventies, I guess things change.”

Dean’s eyes flicker up to look at him for a moment. “I guess you’re uh, you’re pretty old, huh?”  
“Yes,” Castiel answers, smiling slightly.

They both order burgers and Dean orders  large strawberry milkshake, which he takes exactly two sips of and then pointedly nudges it towards Castiel’s side of the table.

“So,” Dean says. "I guess you're an only child, huh?"

Castiel feels himself smile instinctively. "My mother and father met suddenly and he was gone as soon as he came. She had been engaged, though. In the old country."

Dean scoots forward slightly and raises an eyebrow. The waitress brings him a drink ("A cherry coke would be great, ma'am, thanks.") and he takes a long slurp of it.

"He was of an old bloodline," Castiel elaborates. "Her second cousin."

He thinks of his mother. Her long, long hair that she would braid every morning. He thinks of her eyes. Of the wrinkles around her eyes like the fibers of a downy feather. Of her voice on her deathbed, of her steady, unbroken voice.

"She told me she had not loved him. And that he would have beaten her, had she married and stayed," he murmurs.

Castiel looks up at Dean, who is still looking at him intently with his green, green eyes. "What is your brother like?" He asks.

"He's a pain in my ass," Dean answers. "Four years younger than me and he's _always_ been the smart one, you know?" He shakes his head. "Good, though. Despite...the clusterfuck that's been our lives, he's a good guy." He scratches his neck, almost absently, and says,  “So, what can I do to help?”

Castiel frowns and looks up at him.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Dean eats a fry and chews expressively. “I mean, what are you going to do from here? Are you going to put your shop back together or- I mean, if you don’t have a plan yet, that’s fine but...how can I help?”

* * *

Dean says it, and then Castiel pauses. He closes his eyes and takes a long, shuddering inhale.

"I don't know," he answers, his low voice barely more than a whisper. "I've never had to...to start over before."

"You're not starting over," Dean says. "The building is still there. And the people who you've helped, they're still there too. I bet I'm not the only one looking who would want to help."

Castiel gives him a shaky, watery kind of smile, and Dean feels his own stomach sink.

"It was more than that, though- there were varietals there- I wouldn't know _how_ to begin to replace them. And there were starters to spells that she had brought over that lost their spark and even the sigils are wrong. There's so much that was wrong, there's so much that's broken," he says. His voice shakes, sounding like the shaking line on an oscillator.

Dean reaches across the table and takes Castiel's hand carefully in his own. "Okay," Dean murmurs. "How about we start with your dirt?"

Castiel moves his hand to carefully entwine his fingers with Dean's, and Dean feels his cheeks heat. He realizes, suddenly, that he is holding hands with a man- a _witch_ \- in public and he doesn't feel compelled to untangle his hands, instead he feels like he did when he was a kid, when he would lay on his back and look up at the sky and count the stars. He feels himself confronted by something so much larger and bigger and more powerful than himself, connected to this sensation through a tenuous grasp of hands.

He looks at Castiel, and the light of the room around them seems to have changed. It looks like it's dimmed or desaturated or something, because Castiel seems to _glow_. He looks like he's composed of the same stuff as stars, and Dean doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want to stop being connected to that light.

Sometimes, his life is easier now that his father cannot see him.

Castiel nods.

"Let's go to a forest," he says."It has to be live."

Dean lets himself be tugged away by this star as they leave the diner.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Sam lays in bed and his skin hurts.

He doesn't think it's been this bad in years. His lips are bleeding. He's covered in scratches and large, open sores. It all feels red and swollen.

The stuff in the bathroom, it's there. It's waiting for him to go in there and use it.

Sam knows all about bargains and deals. He knows all about necessary evils and _just this one time_.

He's pretty sure some of that got him _into_ this mess, and he's not going to play with that shit again.

Dean looked so upset when Sam told him he wouldn't use the stuff, but magic? Magic's never anything but bad news.

Sam turns over under the blankets. His stomach growls a little bit but not in the hungry way- in a nauseous, nervous kind of way.

It's gotten worse since he was...since...since _Hell_.

Since Jess died.

Sam pulls himself up from the bed and shuffles to the bathroom. Probably a good idea to wash with the antibacterial soap before putting on more aloe.

He throws the stuff Dean bought in the garbage can.

He keeps the lights off. Easier to avoid the mirror with the lights off and easier to avoid _him_.

He's the worst part of this all.

* * *

It's midnight when they get back into the city, dirty and tired. There's a steel pot full of dirt in Dean's trunk and two big bags of regular potting soil.

They swung by a home improvement store on the way out of the woods, to get new wood and some tools. "I can mix some of the live soil with this," Castiel had said. "It'll bring it to life, with time. And worms. I'll need some worms."

They pull up to Castiel's building. It stands a little crooked in the earth. A little more grey and worn than when Dean saw it first, but Castiel looks at it with such warmth. Such _hope_.

Castiel has a way of looking wounded and hopeful that makes Dean ache.

Castiel feels like a part of himself that he lost.

Dean pulls the key from the ignition and looks over at Castiel, who is holding a tray of assorted baby herbs.

It's strange. Under the glow of the streetlight, he doesn't look like he could be much older than twenty, his hair overlong, his eyes bright, the plants small and bright in his lap.

"You are a good man," Castiel says softly.

Dean shakes his head. "Nah," he says.

He smiles at Castiel.

"Let me help you get your stuff out of the trunk, okay?" he asks. "I should probably head home. Sam probably hasn't eaten dinner yet."  
Castiel smiles a little broader, the slightest change, but it spreads that warm feeling a little further.

He gets out of the car and opens the trunk. Castiel fumbles with his keys and opens the door to the shop, the bell jingling. He flicks on a light.

Dean carries the bags of dirt, Castiel carries the pot.

It looks different than it did. The shelves are empty but for cobwebs and dust. Before where there was an organicism and breath to the space, there is now a dirtiness. A gritty feeling to the air and an emptiness. Something crunches under his boots, something that feels like broken glass.

He's so close to demanding that Castiel pack up and come to the bunker with him, but the light hits Castiel a certain way. He has a certain smile, his finger wrapped dear around his tray of seedlings.

He looks heartbroken, but he doesn't look like the world has ended.

He looks like he's starting over, with all of the pain that it entails.

He turns around and walks into his back room, and Dean slips out the front door.

Dean thinks about him the whole drive home.

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

The bunker is dark when Dean gets in- lights off. Everything is cold, partially from being underground, partially from being so _empty_.

It's hard to be in the space and not know it as the nerve center it once was, the headquarters, the base.

Dean can't help but wonder if these men ever hunted Castiel or his mother.

He looks at the structure of the building, concrete and metal and glass, something hopeful in the low and wide arches, the aspiration in the art deco.

Faded now. Glory gone and not even remembered.

Dean can't help but think of how strange it is that they're here, he and Sam. That they wound up here from Kansas- from everywhere and _nowhere_ , really.

The only place Dean's ever really felt connected to was his car.

He can't imagine what Castiel's going through. What he's gone through.

To be tied so intrinsically to a place- to a place as people.

Dean slips out of his shoes in the kitchen, trying to avoid tracking mud through the rest of the house. He shrugs out of his jacket. He slumps down the hall, toward the bedrooms.

Sam is a dark shape under his blankets. His breathing is shallow, all of him hidden but for a peeking of dark hair under the blanket.

"Heya, Sammy," Dean whispers in the doorway.

There's no response. Dean's not expecting one- Sam's a pretty heavy sleeper and he's quiet. He's not looking to actually wake him up. To actually-

He's just looking to talk to him.

"I wish you'd just let me take care of you," Dean whispers.

He remembers when Sam was small. When he was shorter than him, when he was light- innocent. When he thought Dean had hung the moon and the stars.

God, Dean misses it. He misses when Sam believed that the things were _okay_.

That things would _be_ okay.

There's just enough light in the room to see him, the low glow of a nightlight at the wall just enough to catch an outline of him. A shape of him.

God, Dean feels like he's _losing_ him.

He walks to his own bedroom. He falls down onto his bed. He falls asleep and dreams of the stars above a campfire, spitting off sparks into the sky.

* * *

When Castiel wakes up in the morning, he feels something inside of himself that was never there before. Like a shoot, something tender and green and new.

The shop and his quarters are still grey, still the dusty, dirty color of death, but he feels inside of him a blossoming, a prayer.

Castiel reaches for that sensation as he comes down the stairs and gets to work.

It's going to take a lot to get it right. It's going to be hard.

He opens his windows.

He gets to work.


	13. Chapter 13

When Sam wakes up he _hurts_.

He opens his mouth to express the _agony_ hidden inside of him and he hears his brother's voice.

"Hey, Sammy," he says, "hey, Sammy." His fingers are wound through Dean's hand, tight and safe. Sam can feel his hair sticking to his brow, but Dean hasn't reached forward to brush it away. He understands why.

God, it _hurts_.

He feels like his throat is full of broken glass. Scraping and burning.

"Hey, Sammy, I've called a friend, okay? He's gonna come over and take a look at you and it's gonna be okay, okay Sammy? Okay? Can you take a deep breath, okay?"

Sam tries to form a word around his tight throat and bleeding lips but the minute air brushes through him he feels an ache, another agony.

"Don't try to talk, okay Sammy? Can't feel too good." Dean's voice is tight in the way it is every time Sam gets sick or hurt. Tight like it was when he was six and had pneumonia, tight like when he woke up the first time he died, tight like it was eight months ago when he got back from Hell.

It's all wrong. It's all wrong and there's nothing he can do about it.

-

Dean sits in the dark bedroom and listens for either his phone to ring or the chime attached to the bunker door to ring out.

He'd woken up this morning to the screaming. Hadn't been this bad since Sam went cold turkey all those years ago, this animal, helpless sound.

Dean knew it was bad. He didn't know it was _this_ bad though. Couldn't have known, not with the way Sam hides things, not with the way he's been away, helping Castiel get his shop back in order.

Sam's breath is rasping and aching in the room, the only sound until Dean hears the doorbell.

"I'll be right back," Dean answers. "Gonna get you all fixed up, Sammy."

Sam doesn't answer. He's not awake for more than a few minutes at a time right now.

God, Dean's fucked this up so hard.

Castiel looks disheveled like he always does, but there's something particularly breathless to him right now. His over shirt is open over a t-shirt. He's wearing slippers. His hair is sticking out in every direction. He's got a leather bag and he's wearing some jewelry Dean's never seen before.

He doesn't say anything, he just nods and follows Dean into the bunker.

He leads him to Sam's room and says, "He was screaming when he woke me up and he was conscious for a few moments not too long ago."  
"Of course," Castiel murmurs. They stop in from of the door and Castiel looks at it.

When Dean opens it, he flinches.

-

Castiel's never felt anything like it before.

God help him it _burns._  


When he was young, Mother helped him take care of the warts on his fingers and what she used had been so cold it had been a kind of fire that had seared into him.

This is like that but all over him, his whole body and into his lungs.

And Dean's brother lay there on the bed with this cold fire trapped inside of him, eating him from the inside out, searing his skin away from his flesh and bones.

Castiel feels the warm, silver weight of his mother's ring on his pinky, felt the strength of oxbone on his thumb, breathes through it. Anchors himself.

"I need you to bring me a box of matches, a tall glass, hydrogen peroxide, and a piece of black paper," he says.

When Dean called him, voice shattering like blown glass, Castiel knew that it had to be bad.

This is the worst he's ever seen.

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

It takes Dean fifteen minutes to find what he asked for, and in that time, Castiel has lit eighteen short candles on the nightstand. He has a mortar and pestle out and the room smells faintly of woody, earthy herbs.

“Rosemary,” he murmurs, before Dean can ask. “A customer had an old bush from a cutting my mother gave her mother. Its roots are strong.”

He pulls a case out of his bag and pulls a long, silver pin from it. He looks at Dean. “I need you to trust that this will be painful. This will be traumatic. But this will help. This will...this will help.”

Kneeling at his brother’s bedside, in the flickering and shifting candlelight, Castiel looks ancient. Castiel looks like history, looks like an unreal image, a primal memory, something hardwired.

And Sam...bleeding and raw like an exposed nerve.

“Okay,” he says. “I trust you.”

Castiel looks at Sam now.

“Sam,” he says. “Sam, you do not know me but you must hear me in this moment. Sam, I am going to hurt you. This is going to hurt. But if luck is with us, you will never hurt like this again. I need you to tell me that you want this. That I have your consent to do what I must.”

On the bed, Sam’s eyes flutter open for the barest moment, to lock with Castiel’s.

The barest tilt of a head. A yes.

* * *

 

Castiel grabs Sam’s finger and presses the pin to it, drawing blood. It beads upward, and Castiel pushes it into the mortar and pestle. The scent in the room changes slightly, and Castiel rolls the pestle back and forth in the mortar. He looks at it for a long time, and it smokes slightly.

“Dean, I need boiling water,” he says, and Dean darts away.

Castiel pulls a pair of silver scissors out of his bag and trims a lock of hair. He wraps it slowly in twine, one two three four times and knots it. He places it in the tall glass.

He blows out one candle.

The air in the room stirs.

Castiel re-opens his case and opens a sterile packet of needles. Long, thing, and hollow.

He dips his thumb in the mixture in the mortar and presses his thumb into the center of Sam’s forehead, feeling for the right point, the pressure spot. Sam groans under the pressure, and when he screams, Castiel knows he’s found it. He pushes the whisper thin needle into the point, barely through the surface of the skin, and the screaming stops.

Another candle blows out.

Castiel looks at it for a moment and blinks. The first candle relights.

He moves down to Sam’s chest and presses along his sternum until he feels the other pressure point, easier now that he’s found the first. It’s practically knotted at the surface, huge and inflamed.

He slides the next needle in. Draws a line from the first point to the second using the mixture from the mortar. The coarsely ground rosemary stays at the surface and the blood leaves a sticky trail, already turning brown on the air.

Castiel doesn’t even have to press to find the next one. It’s swollen over the surface of his belly. It’s gargantuan.

He licks the piece of paper and lays it over the point and Sam shouts, sudden and crying bright.

That’s when Dean comes back, questions pressing through his lips, but Castiel holds up a single finger, the signal to hush. Words now will break it. Words will give it a way out, a method to escape. If it can escape, it can come back.

The third candle blows out, and the second relights.

The air stirs in the room and Sam cries out again. “Please,” he moans, his voice aching. “Please, please, I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything. Please, please. I’ll be good. I’ll be good, I’ll make it good. Please.”

The water scorches Castiel’s fingers as he dunks a rag into it and he wrings it out. Lays it over Sam’s eyes and the whimpering continues but it loses the shapes or semblance of words.

Candle four, candle three.

Castiel looks down at the square of paper, plastered to Sam’s stomach.

He waits.

Candle five, candle four.

Sam’s back arcs. Screaming now. So loud Castiel feels glass break.

Candle six, candle five.

Castiel lights a match and places it in the tall glass. The fire burns. The fire burns through the match, no discernable fuel to sustain it. Just fire. Clear fire and time.

Castiel waits, eyes sharp on the pressure point.

Silence, for a whole minute, and then the screaming resumes.

Candle seven, candle six.

Castiel overturns the glass of fire onto the square of paper and Sam’s screaming changes texture. Not pain, not agony. Hate. Rage. Fear. Sickness. It falls out of him like rain, like leaves from a tree, like snow, like ash.

Castiel grits his teeth. He presses on. All of the candles flicker.

Behind him, Castiel can feel Dean resisting the urge to babble, to say every word he has ever known and heard, every story and bawdy joke inside of himself, every swear and slur. Dean resists that urge.

Something explodes through the paper and into the jar, a huge hole forming in it. Sam’s back relaxes and he gags. Castiel dumps the hydrogen peroxide into the tall glass and then throws it onto the floor. Blue fire sprouts where the glass breaks and then it’s gone.

Candle eight, candle seven.

Castiel pulls out the needles and smudges the poultice away. Pulls away the blindfold.

The candles all go out.

Castiel sighs, satisfied, and then he passes out.

 

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

_When he dreams, its of a white, frost covered room. The light is blue and crisp, the air is echoing._

_And when he opens his eyes, it’s different._

* * *

Dean stands in the doorway of the room for a long moment and then he rushes through, unsure who to help first. A moment ago, he wanted to talk, to say everything, but now he’s caught between Sam’s name and Castiel’s- practically frozen. So he stands there, between where Cas has fallen on the floor and where Sam lies on the bed, poultice still smeared over his skin.

Dean looks at him, looks at his brother with his brow slowly unfurrowing. And his skin itself, slowly changing. The redness is clearing. The strange, sticky texture is disappearing and the open sores seem to be closing, shrinking. The change is damn near instantaneous.

His breathing changes. It becomes easy, like he’s actually sleeping. Dreaming.

When Dean reaches out and touches his brother, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t shrug, he doesn’t push away from the sensation. He just rests.

Dean leans down and checks on Castiel, there on the floor.

He pushes his hair from his brow, and Castiel twitches. The motion is vicious and sharp and he groans a little with it. The encounter is electric, like he’s been shocked suddenly, and Dean feels a strange, fluttering fear in the pit of his stomach at that.

He looks at Castiel and Sam.

He pulls a pillow from the bed and rests it under Castiel’s head, trying to ignore the small whimpers that fall from Castiel’s mouth when he moves his head.

And Dean sits in a chair in the room and waits for one of them to wake up again.

* * *

When Sam wakes up, he feels different. Good different. His skin doesn’t ache- his muscles don’t either. He doesn’t feel like he’s burning, dissolving away and falling apart.

He feels _new_ , in fact. Real.

He sits up in his bed and assesses.

Dean is asleep in an armchair, opposite the bed. His head is nodded forward onto his chest, his mouth slack. His breath is soft in the room.

To the right of Sam, laying on the floor, is a man with dark hair and tense features, his mouth drawn tight and his hands clenched over his abdomen.

The witch, Sam remembers.

On his nightstand are puddles of wax. Shattered glass on the floor.

He hears a sudden noise, and then Dean says, "You're awake."

Sam nods. "It doesn't hurt anymore," he murmurs.

He looks at the witch, who gives a full body _jerk_ like he's been shocked.

"Can you get up?" Dean asks, and Sam nods.

Dean stands and he leaps across the distance between them and hugs him, full body. Tight.

"God, Sammy," he says. "I was so worried. You were so...god, Sam, you were so fucked up."

Sam holds Dean, and it's hard not to notice the way his older brother nests smaller than him into his space.

The witch on the floor groans and Dean shifts.

"Okay," he murmurs. "This is uh...Castiel."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another update coming soon. sorry it's been so long!


	16. Chapter 16

His eyeballs feel dry on the inside of his skull, like they separated out from his optic nerves and took a long journey through a long desert. He opens his eyes unevenly, as a result, and then he has to do the work of making them focus, and when he finally does, he’s looking at a flat bank of fog, stretching eyeball endlessly in every conceivable direction. Huge.

“Hey, Cas,” he hears a voice say, and then the shape of Dean’s head swims into his view.

“Not an endless fogbank,” he murmurs.

The head rotates slowly, to an angle.

“It’s a ceiling,” he says softly.

“How you feeling?” Dean says.

“There was a song that used to play on the radio,” he says. “Sometimes, when people came in with their little radios, the horse. In the- he didn’t have a name?”

Dean squints.

“I feel like the horse in the desert, with no name,” he continues.

And Dean laughs at that.

“Let me help you up,” he says, and then his hands are on Castiel’s back and pushing him slowly upward, and Castiel realizes he has been laying on the floor, in the bunker where Dean lives.

A memory of fire swims around in his head, connected to nothing.

It hurts.

* * *

Dean gets Castiel sitting up for just a moment, and then he’s twitching and seizing and his nose is bleeding and he’s frothing at the mouth, and fuck, okay it’s a seizure now and Dean helps him back down to the floor and starts counting.

Sam had these, once or twice, when he still had the visions. He put the protocol away in his head, and the thought- the motion of it- is still there.

It’s a little under a minute- forty eight seconds- and then Castiel is in that strange recovery space. Lights on, nobody home, Dean thinks.

“Hey, Sam,” he says, trying to keep his tone calm and still and light, “go get a big pitcher of water, a cup, and some towels, okay?”

Sam liked it when he talked like this to him after the seizures, or maybe it just made _Dean_ feel better, but he tries to stay even and steady and calm.

Castiel twitches a little bit every few seconds, like his muscles are re-coiling and cramping and crackling.

"Okay, Cas," he says. "Okay. You're okay. You're safe. You're okay."

Castiel groans, and the sound is broken and animal, unaware. His eyes flicker open but they don't really focus on anything- the look on his face isn't confusion, it's...absence.

It's as scary as when Sam did it.

Sam comes in with a large steel bowl and a large glass of water. He has one of the big towels from the bathroom closet. He stays quiet, lets Dean keep talking, keep murmuring.

It's been nearly sixteen hours since what happened in here...happened. And Sam looks amazing- his skin looks clear and soothed. He looks like he's _slept_ for the first time in forever. He looks solid and real.

He also looks so _guilty_.

Castiel moves suddenly, as if he wants to get up, and Dean helps him slowly upward, supporting his weight.

"Hey, Cas," he repeats. "Hey, how we doing? We're fine. We're fine."

* * *

Sam looks at Castiel, practically a stranger to him, prone on the floor.

And it's all his fault. It's all his fault that Cas came here, that he did this... _thing_ and now-

Now he's dying of the poison-

Of the _Devil_ -

That was killing him.

And he looks at him.

And he goes down the hall and to the library.

Sam's good at a lot of things. He's good with animals and he makes a pretty good spinach salad but his one, true talent is _research_. For the love of god, he was going to be a _lawyer_ once. And sure, he checked once before, looked things up and read and read and read.

But he's not going to let a stranger die of _his_ poison. Of _his_ Devil.

He hears the echoing cadence of his brother's voice down the hall, the edges blurring away from the words and the sound and the rhythm becoming all that remains.

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

Dean wants to call 911, but he’s not even sure how to talk to someone about what’s been happening, much less a medical professional, and that doesn’t even approach how he would begin paying for this. Castiel doesn’t have that kind of money, and neither does he, to be honest.   
He’s stopped seizing, thank god, and he’s opened his eyes and looked around the room in that slippery kind of way, like his eyes can’t get traction on anything in the room, like the textures aren’t right or they moving rapidly upstream and he can’t grasp it correctly.   
But he’s asleep, and Dean doesn’t really know what to do.  
He doesn’t know where Sam went.  
He hopes that Sam is okay.  
Eventually, his eyes flutter back open and settle over Dean’s face. Find purchase in his features, because his brow creases and he says, softly, “Mother?”  
Dean tries to keep his face open and neutral. “Hey, Cas,” Dean says, trying to keep his voice soft and warm, “you wanna try sitting up for me? Getting some water?”  
Castiel frowns a little. “Hurts,” he says.  
Dean pulls the bowl over, helps Castiel lean over it.   
“Can you spit for me?” Dean asks. “Think you bit your tongue.”  
There’s a loose, weak sound and then groaning. Some spit, some blood, in the bowl.   
“Mother?” Castiel asks again.   
“It’s me, Cas,” Dean says. “It’s me, Dean.”  
“Oh,” Castiel says, face frowning again. “Hurts.” He says something else, in a language that Dean doesn’t recognize or know, something slipping and squishy sounding, sibilant consonants rustling against each other and back of his mouth. He sighs, heavily. Rests his body against Dean heavily.   
“Do you want to try to make it back to the bed?” Dean asks. He helps to sit him up, bringing him forward and to his feet, slowly.   
Castiel says more in what Dean thinks is Russian.   
“Okay,” Dean says. “I bet you’ll be more comfortable in a bed. Get up next to some pillows? Won’t have this shitty concrete digging into your hips, that’s for sure.”  
He helps pull Castiel slowly onto the bed and he practically collapses into the matress.   
“Mother?” he asks again.  
“No,” Dean says, keeping his voice soft and light. “No, it’s just me. Dean.”  
“Oh,” Castiel repeats. He’s stuck in some loop- Dean knows about this. Something about the fits, leaves the brain a little scrambled while it finds its rhythm again, its shape. “Sore. Wha’ happened?”  
“You had a fit,” Dean says. “But it’s over. Just rest, okay, Cas? Can you do that for me?”  
Castiel’s eyes are so blue, like clear winter morning. Like a frozen lake. Like a bright spring sky.   
He looks strangely...unweighted. In this strange space, after the fit, after helping Sam, he looks almost breathlessly...young. Childlike, almost. His features seem rounder and looser.   
Dean feels an overwhelming need to protect him, and he feels a terrible guilt for not being able to comfort him in his own language.  
“Just rest, okay? I’m right here, Castiel. I’m right here,” he repeats.  
Castiel sighs, heavily, and his eyes close again, and he falls asleep for a long time.  
-  
When Sam comes back into the room, Castiel has been moved from the floor to a bed and Dean is watching him sleep, in that anxious kind of way Dean does.  
To his bones, Dean is a protector. A watcher. Not quite a saint, not really, but a guardian. Sam’s not surprised to find him here, nearly two hours after the fit, his eyes ringed heavily with exhaustion and his shoulders sagging with sleeplessness, but Sam does feel that undeniably pang of guilt.   
Can’t help but feel that he did this, to his brother.   
To his brother’s friend.  
“There’s been more going on with you,” Dean says. “You haven’t been telling me...what’s been happening. You just let it get worse.”  
“Dean-“ Sam starts.  
“No,” Dean says, “Sam- you hurting...it hurts other people. It hurts me and now it’s hurt...it’s hurt Castiel.”  
Sam doesn’t say anything about the weighted pause, the uncomfortable silence, and he doesn’t say anything about the particular way his brother’s voice seems cracked and heavy.   
“We’re talking about this, Sam,” Dean says. “We’re talking, because you’re hiding whatever’s going on, and it’s pulling you apart at the seams.”  
“It’s hard to explain-“  
“Then try,” Dean interrupts.  
Sam sits down, opposite side of the bed, in one of the uncomfortable alluminum chairs he keeps in his room. “I went to Hell, Dean. I know you did, too, but I went to Hell and whatever happened...it was like there was something stuck in me. It was like I was infected, from the inside, and my body was just trying to burn it out.”  
Dean doesn’t look up at him. His eyes are fixed at the witch on the bed. Castiel is buried in sleep. The sleep looks neither restful or dream-filled. It looks like his body has just run out of the energy to sustain him altogether.   
“You think Cas took it out of you? The infection?” Dean asks.  
Sam nods. “I feel...right. Like everything in me is supposed to be there. Even when the soap was working, I didn’t feel this good.” Sam shifts a bit, his sitbones grinding against the metal. “I don’t think I realized. Between...everything, I haven’t felt right in a long time.”  
Dean sighs. “Okay,” he says. “You said you think it was an infection?”  
Sam nods.   
“Well,” Dean replies. “That sounds like a start. You got books pulled already?”  
Sam nods.  
“Bring me a couple,” Dean answers. “And brew some coffee. Let’s get to work.”

 


	18. Chapter 18

Castiel blinks awake, rolls over in the bed, sore. His muscles all ache and his throat burns, like maybe he threw up earlier. His mouth is sore, too. He feels weirdly  _ small _ , is the thing. He feels like he did when he was sick, as a child, and his mother would make him tea and wrap him up in blankets, make him safe and secure in bed. It’s a same feeling, in this cool, dark room, populated by the scent of sleep and the sensation of strangeness. He feels weirdly disconnected from himself, from his body. 

He sits up, biting back a groan. He stands and moves carefully out of the room. 

Concrete floors and tall, brick walls. He’s underground, he can feel by the particular vibration of it. He’s out of town- and then he kind of remembers-

Remembers Dean and Dean’s brother-  _ Sam _ \- and the spell and what the spell would do. What the spell  _ did _ .

Castiel leans against the cold wall for a moment, breathing through the memory of it and breathing through the knowledge of what it was. 

“Whoah there,” he hears, suddenly. He looks up. Dean’s there, holding two big cups of coffee. “Good to see you’re awake,” he says. His voice is soft and a little nervous. “We were worried.”

“I’m not well,” Castiel says. “Not yet.”

“We uh, we know,” Dean replies. “We’re looking for stuff- something that might help. Do you want to come see the library?”

Castiel feels the texture of the drywall under his hands. He smells the coffee and the cold, musty smell of being underground, he hears the low and soft sound of Dena breathing. Castiel lets his senses ground him, put him  _ here _ .

“The  _ devil _ ?” Castiel asks, looking at Dean. 

Dean’s jaw clenches for a moment. He looks down, and then away. “Uh,” he says, “yeah. Yeah.”

Castiel lets himself be grounded by the cool, damp air.

“Show me this library,” he says, finally.

“Here,” Dean says, passing him a cup of coffee. “Take this.” With his hand free now, he settles his arm over his waist, supports him. 

Castiel feels the warmth of his body against him, feels it seep into his bones.

Castiel feels his eyes close, for the barest moment. Thinks of his mother. Thinks of the warm, sibilant tones of her language in his throat. 

_ Killing a god comes easily _ , she says.

“This is it,” Dean says. “It came with the place, and this isn’t even the whole archive, but it’s got a little bit of everything. Sammy, you still want coffee?”

Sam looks up from the table, and he looks absolutely exhausted, but his skin looks healthy and fresh and he looks like he doesn’t have the same weight to him that was there before.

“Yeah,” he says. He stands, and he extends his hand toward Castiel. “Hi,” he says. “I think.. I know...I’m Sam. You saved my life.”   
Castiel looks at his hand and looks at his earnest hazel eyes and nervous face. Full of hope but also a kind of fear. 

Castiel takes his hand. “Hello, Sam,” he says. “It’s very good to meet you. Your brother speaks very highly of you.”

Sam smiles, a little broader, a little happier. 

Castiel sees why Dean would do such things to keep him safe.

“Here,” Dean says, guiding him gently through the room. “This is the good chair. I’ll grab a couple of books for you- what languages do you know?”

“English and Russian. My Yiddish and Hebrew are...rusty,” he says. “Mother spoke it with people she helped in the city but made no effort to teach me.”

“No latin?” Dean asks, his voice fading behind a bookcase.

“No,” Castiel says. “It’s not my tradition. And I only know the earthly tongues.”

“Earthly?” Sam asks, looking up from his coffee. 

Castiel nodes. “I don’t speak angel or devil or god,” he says. “Their communications are their own.”

Sam bites his bottom lip. Looks away. “It’s...it’s very loud,” he says. “Whatever it was that he spoke. It was like being shaken, all over.”

“The devil?” Castiel asks, and he tries not to wince against the name, to not feel the way it leaves something in his chest that hurts. 

Sam nods. 

“Tongue of angels,” Castiel says. “Everything that is broken was beautiful once.”

Silence hangs between them, only interrupted by Dean grabbing a book and walking around a shelf to put it in Castiel’s lap. 

“Check this one out,” he says. “It’s indexed with ‘hell’ but nothing about ‘injury.’ Either ‘hell-backslash-injury’ is somewhere else or there’s not a volume on it. Should direct you to specific file names though; we can go into the cabinets for those later. Sam’s got ‘curses-backslash-skin’ and I have ‘possession-backslash-skin.’ You find anything good, pipe up?”

Castiel nods. “Could I actually- could I try something?”

Dean shrugs. “You need anything for it? Some kind of dirt?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No,” he says. “But don’t talk for a few minutes.”

He pulls off his shoes, feels the concrete floor under his bare feet. Steps forward and runs his hands over a shelf.

This place is an ecosystem. A forest. A garden, a garden full of knowledge. Castiel knows gardens, he knows their texture and shape under his hands so clearly. Even this one, this new one. 

Castiel closes his eyes and takes a breath in. 

“Apocalypse,” he says. “Check the files for ‘apocalypse.’”

“No,” Sam says. “No- we  _ stopped _ that- we  _ fixed _ that.”

“What you want to know, it’s there,” Castiel says. “What we need.” He moves around the case and pulls a folio down from a shelf. He opens it. 

“It’s this,” he says. 


	19. Chapter 19

Dean bends over the folio and looks at it intently. He frowns as he reads, his brows knitting together in concentration. 

The papers are old and yellowed, and the ink on them is faded in spots. Half hand-written forms and typed information. The binding is tight, and it creaks as it’s opened and the pages are turned. Castiel feels something from it, an undeniable kind of energy. An aura, that feels like that cold fire when he opened the door that seems to have now settled into his chest. 

“Purifying it isn’t enough,” Castiel says. “It’s-  _ He _ ’s smart. It’ll travel.”

Reading, absorbing date this way- this does not come naturally to Dean, and it is no more apparent than now, when he is here, bent over it. Castiel tries to read it, but he can’t get his eyes to uncross, to take up the data sensibly. 

Castiel feels instinct, and Dean- Dean radiates action in shimmering waves. The totalizing need to  _ do _ , to move, to act. 

“Dean,” Sam says, “let me look at that.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, you’re right. Put that Stanford brain to use.”   
Sam’s cheeks go pink at the mention. “That was...a long time ago,” he says. “And a handful of concussions.”

“Listen,” Dean says, stepping away from the book. “I got the looks; had to leave you something. I’m gonna go cook something. You two wanna grab your materials and sit in the kitchen while I cook?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Dean nods, steps away from the table and heads away.

Castiel lets himself sink back into the chair. He sighs.

He’s-

Tired.

“Do you need help?” Sam asks. Utter sincerity, this fills him and defines the texture of his voice. 

Castiel nods. “Please,” he says. “The spells, they left me...I need to rest, still. And the fit, the fit didn’t help.”   
Sam tucks the folio under one arm and helps Castiel stand with the other. Castiel finds himself leaning against him, and strangely, Sam is the most solid human being he’s ever encountered. It’s like experiencing a human wall more than anything, his whole body overwhelmingly firm and taut. 

“Your brother,” Castiel says. “He cares about you, very much.”

Sam smiles, warmly. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Dean cares about everyone.”

They walk carefully from the library to the long, cold hallway. 

“My garden, in the city, it died,” Castiel says. “The whole shop- my hearth. What held it together, it crumbled apart. And Dean, the first thing he did when I told him, he asked to help. And all the time that I have known him, he’s barely mentioned himself. What he wants or likes.”

Castiel looks at the bare, cold walls. Feels the bare, cold place here. 

“Why do you live here?” He asks.

Sam shrugs. “We own it,” he says. “And we don’t really have the means to live somewhere else. Living on the road, it’s not good for me. It made me sick when I was a kid. My skin problems weren’t always...unearthly, you know? And between the warrants and the paperwork-”   
“Warrants?” Castiel asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, uh, we...the family business, it’s not always...legal. The hunting. And in doing it, we’ve maybe...broken...a lot of laws. Identity theft, insurance fraud. Desecrating a grave. Arson, technically, but I don’t think they ever tried to put that on us.”

“My lord,” Castiel murmurs. 

Neither of them says anything for a few moments, just continue down the hall and toward where the hall opens back into a living space, a kitchen and a den. 

“Is that why you live so... alone?” Castiel asks. 

Sam nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Part of it. I don’t want it this way. I know Dean doesn’t, despite what he might say. But...people in our line of work, they don’t live long. And people who help people like us- who help us- they don’t either, I guess.” He pauses, for a long, quiet moment. “One dead fiancee...you learn to just...stop trying.”

Castiel feels his heart ache. 

“Stanford?” He asks.

Sam nods.

At his most lonesome, he always had his mother, and the people she knew and her stories. At his most lonesome, Castiel had the history. The babas and the village that the shop linked itself to. 

Sam helps him onto a couch, and Castiel’s nose is filled with the scent of chopped onions and garlic. His eyes water, and there’s the sound of the vegetal matter hitting hot oil not too far away. 

“I’ll look into the book, footnote anything interesting,” he says. “Dean’s cooking dinner. Heal up, okay?” 

Castiel smiles at him. “Like your brother,” he says, before he finds himself drifting away, exhausted by the action of searching, by the action of moving. 


	20. Chapter 20

Dean pulls a hand of ginger and a fist of garlic from the fridge. He trims a two inch section from the ginger and splits the garlic into six cloves. He crushes both of them against the cutting board and then runs the knife through them, easily. Tosses them into a pan with some hot oil. Grabs some thawed chicken from the fridge, the sesame seeds from the pantry. Bag of stir-fry mixed vegetables from the freezer. It’s not complicated, but it will taste good and it’ll keep body and soul together. Dean wants to do something wtih his hands and take care of people. He doesn’t want to do anything fancy. 

Sam walks into the kitchen, easily, comfortably. He grabs a couple of glasses and fills them with ice water. 

“He’s a good man,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. 

“I’m sorry he got pulled into all of this,” he says.

Dean frowns. “I’m glad you’re better,” he says. “And I’m glad that I know him. And I’m sad that he’s suffering. That he’s hurting. And that that’s...that’s our fault. But I don’t...I don’t know, Sammy.”

“He’s tired,” Sam says. “I’m scared that it’s more than whatever the magic took out of him.”

“How old does he look?”

“What?” Sam asks in response. 

“How old- like, does he look your age or does he look like...old?” Dean repeats. 

“He looks like our age, why?” Sam asks. 

Dean shrugs. “It’s...weird. He’s has this thing and it makes him look different, depending on how he’s feeling. Like a-”   
“A glamour,” Sam says. He pulls a bottle of oyster sauce out of the the fridge and hands it to Dean. “He uses a glamour.”   
“Yeah, but it’s like...it’s not something he can help. It’s like another piece of his skin,” Dean says. He opens the bottle and shakes a few jots into the pan. They plop, heavily. He stirs it back and forth. “I don’t think he does it to hurt people or intentionally deceive them. I think it’s just something that he does. And it’s tied to like his...his emotional health and where he is. When his shop got destroyed, it really weight on him and it really affected it.”

“His shop got destroyed?” Sam asks.

“Yeah,” Dean replies. “It was really this...living, vivid thing, too. Big deal. It was kind of like losing an arm or something.”

“What killed it?” Sam asks.

Dean pauses, the spoon stilled in the pan. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

Sam frowns. “That seems...like a good place to start,” he says.

* * *

 

Castiel wakes up, unnervingly, all at once and uncomfortably. He feels strange, and he can’t place how for a long, lingering moment until it occurs to him. 

Instead of rooted, he feels a kind of untethered quality. LIke he’s been cut and is just...in the breeze. He’s just here. He’s just here and he’s broken, somehow. Hollow, under his ribs and along his diaphragm, where grew once the wide network of roots from centuries of roots, from seed strains older than the idea of the city he lives in, older than the ideation of this bunker. Where there used be the long corded rope that tied him to the shop, there is now and unmistakable sensation of being to sea. Of being without anchor.

It is one of the most profoundly lonesome experiences of his life.

He clutches at the space underneath his ribs ( _ underneath his heart) _ and tries to keep his breath steady and to keep his voice in his throat and his tears out of his eyes. 

Where he felt singing, there is silence.

“Dinner is ready,” Dean says, coming around the corner, but he sees him and he’s there, suddenly. Kneels down in front of him, before this chair that’s overwhelming the shape of his body. 

“Cas,” he says, and his voice is very soft, like the sound of baby birds crying onto the air for the first time.“Cas, what’s wrong? What happened? Are you hurting?”

“It’s nothing,” Castiel says. “It’s nothing. I’m trying, I’m trying. I just need a moment. I woke up and felt something and I’m okay, I’m trying.”

Castiel says it over and over again, because if he says it enough, it will be true.

_ This is a kind of magic, _ his mother whispers in his ear.

“Cas,” Dean says, and his hands creep over to his own hands, pull them away from his leaking eyes and running nose. “Cas, I don’t understand you, I don’t speak this language.” 

Castiel’s slipped, into the tongue of his childhood and the tongue of his mother. 

Dean looks at him, green eyes a color totally spring-bright and new. Full and round.

“I know we’re trouble,” Dean says. “My brother and me. But I think that...Cas, Cas, let us help. Let us help you kick whatever goddamn curse it is that is rattling around in you and let me help you get the shop back together, back on track. It won’t bring back what was there, but let me help? And then we’ll leave you alone, I promise. I swear. I know you’re hurting, but let me help you stop hurting, please. Please. It’s kind of...it’s my fault that you’re hurting-”

“It’s not,” Castiel says. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s not the...the thing...the Devil I took out of you brother. I just...I killed it. And I hadn’t...I hadn’t felt it be gone yet.” Castiel takes a deep breath. Looks at him, Dean’s own eyes going a little red, a little scared.

Castiel feels the smallest he’s been in years.

“What if it’s gone? The magic,” he says. 

He  _ whispers. _

Dean’s expression shifts. And it’s not anger that blossoms over his face; it’s something very serious, though. 

“Castiel,” he says softly, “Cas --  have seen...I have seen...Cas -- no matter what happens or what you think will happen, Cas, no matter what happens with your shop or with anything else, Cas, you will always be the most magical thing I have ever experienced.”

And Castiel feels it, through his blood all the way through himself, completely, that Dean knows this is true, and he feels this, as Dean leans forward with utmost delicacy and kisses him, with all the tenderness of a flower blooming.


	21. Chapter 21

It’s the feeling of coming up for air. 

He was in tenth grade. Minnesota. Late at night, he and dad. He’d inched, closer and closer to the edge of the ice, to the edge of the lake. And then it had broken and he’d fallen. 

Emerging from the water, to enter the air again, is one of the clearest moments of Dean’s life. One of the moments he was the most sure he would die ( _ last thing he had said to Sammy was to leave him some peanut butter, that was what he was leaving his brother, an order and nothing else _ ) and then one of the moments where he was more sure, utterly, than he had ever been before, that he would live, he would breathe, that he would experience death not this day but another day. Any other day. 

The feeling of coming up for air, the most complete feeling he’s ever felt, the dual certainty of dying absolutely and of living forever. Dean remembers this the way he thinks infants remember being born.

This feeling, this is what he experiences after he kisses Castiel.

“Whatever happens,” Dean says, “whatever happens, you’re...you’re incredible.”

“Uh,” Sam says, ducking around the corner, “is it cool if I just-”

“Yeah,” Dean says, standing, walking back into the kitchen. “Let me make  you a plate.”

That feeling disappears as suddenly as it happened, and he instead feels that hot, nervous shame he’s felt, every other time he’s built a connection like this to another man. He tries to fight it, tries to place the feeling somewhere else, tries to dodge it. Not sure whether he’s fighting the feeling of the kiss or the feeling of the shame.

He pushes a portion of rice and some vegetables into a bowl. Does this three times and tosses a fork in each bowl. Hands a bowl to Sam and one to Cas and then retreats away.

* * *

 

Castiel feels the warmth of the bowl in his hands and he watches as Dean walks away from him to somewhere else. 

He watches him leave the room, as Sam sits down on the couch opposite him. 

Castiel takes a few bites of food, and Sam does the same. He looks up, after a few moments, before he says, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Castiel looks at him, frowns instinctively. 

“Dean isn’t...Dean isn’t good at emotional stuff,” Sam says. “He’s not good at relationships.”

Sam takes a bite as Castiel finishes his own. Ginger and garlic- heat and purity. “How do you mean?” Castiel asks. 

“Dad was...he wasn’t...Dad was good at a lot of things,” Sam says, softly, like maybe he is remembering. And the air changes a little. Goes a little cool, a little uncomfortable. “Dad loved us, a lot, truly. But Dad was -- John was...I don’t think I really understood it, until Jess died.” 

Sam doesn’t say anything more for a long moment. 

“Dean told a little, about your mother,” Castiel replies.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, same thing happened to Jess. And after...and still...I would have done anything to have her back. I saw her, sometimes. Out of the corner of my eye or on the roadside or in rooms.I thought maybe she was a ghost, but it wasn’t...it wasn’t her. I wanted it to be her, I wanted it to be her so I saw her. And I think Dad... I don’t think John ever really managed to shake Mom out of his vision. It made him...grim and mean, sometimes. And it was the only thing that ever really drove him, and that means that he wasn’t good to Dean a lot of the time. And he was...he was old fashioned.” 

“Your brother likes men,” Castiel says. “And women.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “And John liked to hurt him for it.”

Castiel feels the strange echo what happened, rattling through him completely.


	22. Chapter 22

Sam finishes eating, and Castiel finishes eating, and then Castiel gets up and walks slowly, through this structure to another space.

Dean’s room has no windows. It is closed to itself, with no whisper of outside light or outside air. The walls are grey and cold, like the walls of the hallway. The floor is cold under Castiel’s bare feet. The bed is small and it rests against the back wall, which has lighting affixed to it. The cold, electric light bounces off of the surfaces of it and casts the room in its glow. There’s a wall full of guns, elevated and cleaned and cared for. There’s a typewriter and some pictures on the desk. 

There’s Dean, sitting on his bed, looking lost and frustrated and scared.

Castiel would explain it to people, if he could. Bodies are so much more malleable than people believe, than they think. And Castiel’s body, it has so much time to remember and has so much change written into it, it moves and shifts with himself as naturally and completely as breathing. Castiel’s body, it seems so much more malleable but he can see...he can read when the body changes. He can see. 

This is a magic, this Castiel knows.

And Dean sits on the bed, with his shoulders slumped forward and his head hung low. His body smaller. And when he looks up, Castiel sees it, for just the briefest half-moment. The black eye, spread over the left side of his face. The dried blood from his nose. The way his features are younger but his eyes are just as heavy.

This is there, for barely a moment, and then this shifts once more and Dean becomes as Castiel knows him once more. 

“Your brother loves you,” Castiel says. “And your brother knows you. And your brother is not your father.”

“Don’t,” Dean says. “Don’t -- don’t. Please.” He looks at him. “Please, let me leave this buried.”

Castiel stays standing but he looks away from him. “You can’t leave it buried. You’re wearing it, on yourself”

“Cas-”

“It’s hurting you,” he says. “But I can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. I can’t give you what you won’t ask me for. I told you-- I told you once that that was the path of  _ enchantment _ , and I need you to know, Dean, I do not and will not perform enchantment.” He grits his teeth momentarily. “These things about yourself-- these are not things to hate.”   
And Castiel steps out of the room, back toward the kitchen. Leaves Dean to sit on the bed, in his room.

* * *

 

Dean wishes, in moments like these, that he could play the guitar.

There was a song that Jimmy could play on the guitar, and it’s been stuck in Dean’s head for years. Rolled off his fingers in a steady and easy rhythm, filled the air with song. He had a high but merry voice. 

Dean didn’t talk to him about religion, and Jimmy never asked about where Dean came from or where he might be going. And Jimmy would play guitar while Dean would read and they would be together-- exist, together, in this space.

Jimmy handed him the guitar once and let him feel the strings for a few moments and pull a few chords out of it. 

_ With the roses so bright and the lilies fair,  _ Jimmy had sung, and Dean had never quite caught all the words to sing along. 

Dad had been so mad. Been so angry.

They’d been there for a few months. Sammy had made friends.

And it was no one’s fault but Dean’s, that he had to leave them.

Dean wishes, ardently, fervently, fully, that he could reach out and play an instrument. That he could remember Jimmy through the sensation of his fingers pressing hard against taut strings, now that he has forgotten the feeling of his body under his hands, against his mouth. 

Sam knocks on his door, suddenly 

“Dean,” he says, “You gonna come work or are you done for the night?”

Dean looks up at Sam, who looks tired, but healthy. And who smiles at him a little.

“I didn’t mean...I didn’t mean for you to get hurt,” he says.

Sam looks at him, for a long moment. “What Dad did...that was never your fault, Dean,” he replies. “Ever. I know.”

Dean closes his eyes for a moment. 

Jimmy had dark hair, kind of like Castiel’s.

“Okay,” Dean says. And he gets up from his bed and he rolls his neck. 

“Okay,” he says again. “Yeah.” He looks at his brother. “I’m not ready to...to work through whatever it is. Okay?”

Sam nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Dean nods. "I can't...I can't do this right now. We've got a job to do." He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the floor for a solid moment. “Alright,” he announces. “I think maybe-- maybe what’s in Cas, I think maybe the devil is a red herring here.”


	23. Chapter 23

“What?” Sam asks.

Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think...the thing is, his shop died, right? That happened before he even met you, before you even encountered each other. And that was messing with his appearance-- it added a lot of stress to his system.”

“Like a coral,” Sam says. 

“What?” Dean asks, standing, looking at his brother as he pulls a journal from the shelf and some pens. 

“Corals get stressed and they bleach and die,” he says. “Takes the whole ecosystem with them. It really, really fucks up the biodiversity.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says. Dean answers. “So Cas is like, this fish. And the coral bleaches or whatever and it fucks him up. But that  _ happened before he met you, before all the shit with the devil _ . And he’s still having the same problems. But he’s not running into the skin problems you had or the specific...he’s not having the...the same problems, Sam. He’s not experiencing them. So what if we’re looking in the wrong place, for the solution? What if the devil is gone and it’s something else? What if you’re fine, and he has a problem that’s unrelated but is made worse by all of this?”

Sam’s face pulls into that expression-- eyebrows raised, lips downturned-- he makes when he’s surprised by something but also kind of impressed. “Okay,” Sam says. “That’s compelling, and it might be more productive than what we’ve been doing for the past...day and a half.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Sam continues. “Where would we start, then?”

“We start at the shop,” Dean says. “Something happened there, there’s got to be a tracery of it. A cause. Coincidences don’t just happen coincidentally.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay. We could check that out.”

Dean  pulls a jacket from his closet and takes the notebook with him. 

It feels like a start.

* * *

 

“Cas,” Dean says, coming into the room. He’s behind him. Castiel can’t see him right now, he’s washing his bowl. With the sink on, he can’t hear the rest of the house.

It’s weird, how the space of this building simultaneously makes the space immediately lonesome and painfully public. He feels at once by himself and totally exposed. 

He meant what he said. In the bedroom. 

Cas will not be another hangers on to an extended, nightmarish period of  _ discovery _ for another man. He cannot. 

He has broken his heart that way before, and he cannot bear the thought of doing it again. 

“Dean,” he answers, “Dean-- I meant it. I meant what I said--”

“Cas, we need to go to your shop,” Dean interrupts. “Whatever’s happening, we don’t think it has to do with what was wrong with Sammy; we think it’s something else. We need to go to your shop to check it out. We think whatever’s hurting your shop is hurting you, too.”

Castiel stands there, for a long moment, not quite willing to turn around and look at Dean right now.

“I know what you said, in my room...I know you meant it. I’m not gonna blame you for meaning it or anything. I just-- I need time, to figure myself out. And in the meantime, I’m scared you’re going to be hurt or you’re going to get worse. Can we put me-- my problems on the backburner, for a little while, and sort this out, first?”

Dean’s voice does not as much ask as it  _ begs _ .

_ Let me care for you, as best I can _ .

“Okay,” Castiel says. “Okay. Let me wash these first and then we’ll go.”

* * *

 

Dean hasn’t been back to the shop since he dropped Castiel off with the dirt and the plants.

It looks so different, still. He can’t place what filter it was on his vision when he saw it last, but looking at it now, it looks not like a home for Castiel; it looks like a symptom of urban blight. The glass looks dingy and dirty. He’s amazed that there’s not graffiti on the outside yet. 

Sam looks skeptical, at best, looking at the shop. Castiel looks like his heart his bleeding, breaking.

“It just...died,” Castiel says, softly.

They open the door, and the flat of herbs that were brought in just  _ days ago _ are looking like they’ve been dead for actual weeks, not like they’ve been left to their own devices for a handful of hours. 

Dean frowns, bending over, little more than barely through the doorway, and feels the leaves under his fingertips. 

“What the  _ hell _ ,” he murmurs, frowning. “Cas, can you show Sam where the gardens were? I’m going to poke around out here first.”

“Of course,” Castiel answers. “Just this way.”

He and Sam rustle by him and Dean stands and looks over at the tall, empty bookcases.

Even the books turned to dust; even the crystals shattered. 

Dean feels along the bookcases, feels the dried grain of the old wood. Doesn’t feel anything fishy there. They don’t pull away from the wall at all; built into it. 

He looks all the way up.

“Hey Sam,” he says. “Need you to come be useful in here.”

Sam rolls into the room, his own brow creased heavily. “What’s up?”

“Can you see up, above the cases?”

Sam sighs. “I’m not ten goddamn feet tall, Dean,” he answers, exasperated.

“Fucking, jump or something, I don’t care,” Dean spits back. “Christ, It’s not like I have a damn ladder with me.”

Sam rolls his eyes and jumps a few times, stretching his neck up. 

Castiel comes back into the room.

“You know, I have a library ladder for that,” he says. “If you’d like to borrow it.”

Sam lands, and turns and looks at Dean, thoroughly displeased.

Dean shrugs.

They wrangle it out from the garden room, in the storage shed, and lean it back onto the bookcase. Dean climbs up it and scans the top of the bookcase.

Looks a little more carefully. 

He reaches over and across. 

It’s so small, if he weren’t looking for it, he’s not sure he would have seen it.  Small burlap bag, barely larger than a handful. Tied with heavy cord.

He wraps his hand around inside his jacket and climbs down the ladder. 

“I think I found something,” he says. 

“Is that a hex bag?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah, I think so,” Dean says. He walks over to the counter and lays it down. It looks almost innocuous.

If he hadn’t known to look for it, it would have missed him entirely.

He turns to Castiel, who goes from tired to  _ pale _ to a kind of bright, hot  _ glow. _ A glow of totalizing  _ rage _ , like looking at a sun in the height of noon. 

“It was a  _ curse,” _ Castiel says, spits it out of his mouth like every word is a terrible venom and he will bring death to whatever they bite. “They laid a curse  _ here _ , in my  _ hearth _ , and they expected  _ nothing _ .”

Castiel reaches out, lays his hand on the bag, and one moment it is there and the next there is a small pile of ash where it was. 

He looks at Dean with cold eye, like ice, like steel, like cold mountain water. “They laid a curse and they expected it would drive me from this, my home.”

Castiel bites his lip. 

“I need your help,” he continues. “I need to ward the shop, and I need help divining.”

Dean nods.

“Well,” he answers. “Let’s get to work.”


	24. Chapter 24

White chalk, pressed into cylinders that are wider at the base than at the top. Bay leaves, loads and loads of bay leaves. A jar of white fat and a pile of bones. Long, silver needles, thin and hollow.

Castiel lights a match and holds the flame to a wick. Thirty candles in the room light, and thirty more follow them. The room, dark in the aftermath of sundown, suddenly is alight again. 

Castiel is not wearing shoes. This, Dean notices.

Castiel spits onto the floor, and then he drives the stave of chalk into it a little. 

He murmurs something, but Dean isn’t sure if he can’t hear it or if he can’t understand it. He can’t seem to remember what it was, when he thinks of it. Slid right by him, out of his memory.

The thing that he draws on the floor is round and strange. It branches in some sections but remains within a circle. It makes Dean think of the marks left on people following a lightning strike. It has so much. It is so large. It is  _ dense _ .

Castiel takes the first candle he lit and sets it center to the sigil. Takes one bay leaf he has plucked from heavy branches and holds it over the flame.

It floats.

If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think they were outside. He gets the feeling, however distant and strange, of cold and sudden wind blowing. Rattling their bones. He gets the strange feeling that moonlight has come through, that they are being watched by something.

Castiel’s brow is creased, fully, in concentration.

A pool of water, slow and silver, gathers around the candle. It is perfectly circular, totally round. Dean can see, from here, the way the surface of it bulges upward ever so slightly. As if it contains something.

The candle hangs over it, the bay leaf over the candle. A  collumn. The light of the candle does not flicker or shimmer; it holds completely steady and full. It casts a radiating glow onto the water below.

Around them, with the exception of the pinprick points of light, the room is profoundly, eerily dark. 

Dean feels that if he looked up, he would see not a ceiling but a wide and full sky.

Dean keeps his eyes fixed resolutely on Castiel.

“ _ Show me _ ,” Castiel says. His voice is calm but Fixed. Heavy, loud but not shouting. Loud without volume.

There is a rushing, a silvery sound of things sliding past each other, over each other, around each other. A stream of sound. 

“ _ Show me, _ ” Castiel repeats, his voice louder and clearer. A command.

“ _ You will show me!”  _ He exclaims, and the unsettling noise ceases and all the candles but the one over the pool extinguish.

Dean can see nothing but it’s flame. 

Cannot see the pool of water. Cannot see his brother. Cannot see Castiel.

* * *

Castiel commands it, and spirit in the spell that was keeping them  _ hidden _ , it roars and swells and takes from the room the space, the light, the life.

Only the guide candle stays lit, only the sun at the center of the world. 

More naturally than breathing, Castiel feels the voice of his mother, the  _ language _ of his mother and his childhood, come alive in him. His tongue, unchained, feels the right things to say, in the right language, in the right voice.

“ _ You will show me these things, these wrongdoings, these hideous deeds committed in my space, against my place, against those I protect, against those I aid. You will show me, or I will crush you, as the tide crushes the sand, as the boot crushes the ant.” _

Castiel cannot be afeared of himself, in this moment, but he knows that there will be a dark and strange time where he will remember this and it will leave his blood cold, but not cold in the way it is now.

The flame over his pool stays steady. The bay leaf stays untouched, but floating.

“ _ Show me, _ ” he commands again, in that tongue, and the candle plummets out of air, through the pool, and to the other side.

And he sees, suddenly.

The property developers, their black suits, their smug faces. Their gathering, their sigils, their hex. Their hex, which they laid on him, in his home.

He sees their working of it, and in another glimpse, he sees their faces, their homes, their beds, their hearths.

Castiel’s heart is, in this moment, unreachable. The iced center of a frozen and frigid pond. Sharp and aching and terrible.

Castiel reaches into the deep and silver pool of this, his  _ vengance _ .

He feels every pore on his skin shut closed in how cold it is. 

He plucks, from each hearth he sees, a heart.

Holds them in his hands, bright clear cold marbles of energy, of spirit, of fire. 

Life.

Life, he holds in his hands.

“ _ Blow,” _ he commands. “ _ Blow, cold and furious winds, blow. _ ”

Castiel squeezes, his fist.

He crushes.

Every candle in the room drops, and the darkness falls away, leaving behind the clear and unmystic light of mundane twilight.

Castiel opens his fist.

There is nothing but ash left.

They will know it is him.

He will wait, for them to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (if i wrote original fiction, where would i put that so people could read it?)


	25. Chapter 25

"Cas," Dean asks, looking at him. "Cas, what was that? What happened?"  
The darkness and the noise, both have now passes and left is the kind of deionized humidity of a passed storm. It has a certain funk, a texture. The time soon after a tornado has passed, kneeling still in the ditch by the highway, praying thankfulness that this time, the end of the world skipped over you.  
Castiel stands there, in the room, and looks at his hand. He opens it, from a tightly clenched fist to a widespread palm.   
Dean can see it-- a smear of black soot, deeply dark and oily and powdery, all at once-- spread out over his hand. Castiel opens his other clenched, white fist, and the darkness is there, too.  
Castiel looks from his hands to Dean, and says, with a dreadful certainty, "Dean, I have done something very terrible."  
He does not look afraid, or even regretful, and this is what makes Dean's blood run cold.   
Castiel is being honest here.  
"What did you do?" Dean asks.  
Castiel opens his palm to face Dean, spreads his fingers wide. "I broke their net," he says. "I broke the net where they trapped their power and I stole it. I stole their hearts, the soul in their hearths. I cracked a coven." He looks pale.   
"I killed something that lived, because I could and because I want blood," he continues. "And blood there will be. I hid nothing, and they'll come. They'll be here."  
"What can we do to-" Dean starts, but Castiel reaches out and gestures and his door opens. The totally mundane air of outside fills the room, instead of the charged storm-air of magic that was there before.   
"You will leave," Castiel says. "They want blood. I will not let them take yours with mine."  
"You can't be serious," Sam says, stepping forward. "This is what Dean and I do; we could--"  
"I know," Castiel says. "Which is why I must expel you from here." He looks at both of them, pleading. Anxious. "I won't risk you. I won't."  
And then, they are suddenly outside, by their car, and the door is shut firmly, and Dean knows that if he were to try the handle, it would be locked tight.


	26. Chapter 26

Castiel pushes them from the room and then he seals the door. He seals the front door and the back door, the windows and the fireplace. He seals every pore in hearth, every place where entry could be gained. He closes it, because he knows that if he leaves one spot open, Dean and Sam, they will throw it open and they will step in and they will be as damned and doomed and guilty as Castiel himself is.

Castiel hears them pounding on the door, on the glass. The glassfront is obscured, he has left it this way. He cannot see them, and they cannot see him. But he can hear them; he cannot silence the physicality of their fists on the door, against the glass. 

Castiel cannot unhear them, and he cannot unhear his mistakes. His decisions.

He waits, until the sound ceases, and then he falls to his knees. He bows forward, resting his forehead against the cold floor. Benediction. Forgiveness.

_ I have done something wicked, _ he whispers,  _ in the name of not justice but revenge.  _

But he know that the blood is coming for him, to end him, and that there is no forgiveness in blood, but there is justice. 

This is justice coming for him. It is not coming for Dean, it is not coming for Sam. 

This is his to carry.

There is nothing in this room. In these  _ rooms _ . There’s not crystals, there’s not plants, there’s not ash. There are burned candles and stale smoke and a pool of fetid water, cursed by the act of scrying. 

Castiel screams out, and then he sobs, and he cries and he cries and he cries.

* * *

 

Dean pounds at the door under his hands hurt, until his hands are scraped, until his hands are bruised and bleeding. He screams his voice hoarse. It is only Sam pulling him away, into the car, and driving from the police, that stops him. That silences him. And then he wraps his hands over ears and he rocks back and forth because he can only feel his blood screaming under his skin and the pain that is there, that is new. 

Castiel, who is he is  _ bound  _ to, who he feel tied to like he only feels tied to his brother--

Castiel who he cannot help. Castiel, who has committed himself to something Dean thinks is a kind of suicide.

Sam pulls to the side of a road. He pulls the keys from the ignition. And after a few moments, he says, “Okay. What do we do from here?”

Dean turns, and looks at his brother. He rests his head on the dash in front of him. Sam raises his eyebrows, above him from this angle.

“I’m serious,” Sam says. “Castiel’s gonna go do another stupid thing, because all of our friends are just like us, apparently. What are we going to do to stop him? What are we going to do to help?”

“I don’t know,” Dean answers. “I don’t...I just don’t know, Sam. I don’t know what to  _ do _ .”

Sam purses his lips and frowns slightly. “If it weren’t Cas-- if it were just, any other case...any other circumstance, what would we do?” He asks.

“We’d kill him,” Dean says. “Just burn the building down or break in. But the doors or windows can’t be broken-- we tried. I tried.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “What else would we try? What haven’t we tried?” He pauses, considering. “We could look into counterspells. Break his sealing with sigils or something--”

“We don’t have  _ time _ ,” Dean murmurs, his voice low. “Whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to happen tonight.”

Sam sets his jaw. 

“I’ve never encountered a piece of glass we couldn’t break,” Sam says. “Even enchanted. Glass breaks. Glass wants to break. We go to a hardware store, we buy a sledgehammer, and we break the front window. And if that doesn’t work, we go from there.”

Dean looks at his brother.

It is so hard, in this moment, to not succumb to the despair. To just not do anything-- to do anything about this.

“Okay,” Dean says. He inhales, and sits up, and he exhales, lets the breath leave him as gently as he can. 

Sam nods, and he drives back toward Castiel’s shop. 

Back into the fray.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (expect more tomorrow)


	27. Chapter 27

If Castiel did not know the way the air in the room was a microcosm-- was a universe unto itself-- he is not sure he would have felt the the entrance of the curse into the room. 

But Castiel did know the air, and he did feel it, more subtle than a breeze but less soft than the falling of a mote of dust. A disturbance, and shifting. 

A change in the air, and then a streaking through of bright and hot silver light, shooting sparks in every direction. 

Castiel watches the circling, blasting, hungry light until it buries itself into a wall, shattering heavily the drywall suspended over the brick.

Castiel watches these things, nonplussed.

He is not sure how long he has been here, in this room. He is not sure how long it has been since he did those terrible things, since he cast Dean and Sam from the burned and ashen husk of what had been his hearth. Since he carelessly brushed the soot of someone else’s from his guilted hands. 

Castiel has been waiting. He has been expecting. 

There is the hungry light, and then there is the sound of footsteps, unhurried and confident. 

There is a soft glow of made light, not summoned or brought, but  _ created _ , here in this space. 

Castiel watches the space as the glow becomes brighter, and it’s him. 

It’s the witch from before; the balding man in the bad suit. Weasley face and watery eyes. Overconfident posture and a self-satisfied smirk. 

“Well,” he says. “It would appear that we’ve really found each other out here, eh, Mr. Novak?”

Castiel, he sits on the floor of the hearth-that-was, cross legged and angry. Angrier than he has ever been in his life; so angry he feels himself as a cold and sharp wind, the wind that bites at the skin of drowning sailors. Castiel is angry like the last frosts of February; angry like snow-blindness. Angry as white-coldness. 

“You are a murderer and a thief,” Castiel says. 

_ In seeking something like justice, I have made myself as cold and terrible as you _ , he does not say. But it hangs there, between them. 

This thing Castiel never wanted to be. 

This thing Castiel told Dean he wasn’t.

The witch shakes his head. “Now, Mr. Novak, I wouldn’t go so far as to say  _ that _ ,” he responds. “No, I don’t think that’s fair at all! My associates and I were sure to give you a fair offer, or at least opened the door to you! And you said no, so we returned with a more aggressive tactic!” He pauses, looks around the space. “And I think we both understand the outcome of that! Although you yourself-- when you got with the program! You’re not slouch yourself!” He kicks a bit, as some of the dust on the floor-- that is all that is left here, is the dust. “Took plenty from us-- a whole coven too! Caused all kinds of damage to our systems!”

Castiel looks at the man, who stands before him so brave and tall in his fine suit and his  _ power _ . The power of his carelessness. 

“How does this  _ end _ ?” Castiel asks. 

“You tell me?” He asks.

Castiel can’t close his eyes. He can’t look away. 

“This ends in blood,” Castiel says, “yours and mine.”

And then, Castiel lights his match, and the fire finds the room.

Every empty room is hungry. This is among the first things his mother taught him. 

_ They used this hunger to kill us, once _ , is the among the the first as well. 

The spirit, the hunger in the room, it swallows the fire, and makes one long, arcing line of hunger, of energy, of consumption, of  _ eating, eating, eating.  _

This will kill Castiel. This will also kill the witch before him, the head of this terrible coven, the murderer of Castiel’s hearth, the theif of his lineage, his power, his soul. 

It  _ hurts. _

Castiel holds on. 

The spirit arcs from Castiel to the man and it grasps into him. It is compelled, utterly, by Castiel’s will, to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.

The spirit begins to tear at Castiel, and he feels it begin to tear into the witch, too. Tear him apart. He can hear him screaming. He can feel him screaming. He can feel the dissolving,  _ burning _ pain between them. 

_ They used this hunger to kill us, once _ , he remembers. 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE note the updated warnings for the work.

Sam pulls in front of Castiel’s shop, just as a fireball rips through it, knocking all the glass out of the windows. 

Dean feels his heart sink into his stomach, and then he’s fighting his way out of the car violently and he’s pulling his jacket over his face and he’s diving into the shop. 

Everything is on fire, and there’s a terrible sound, like something pressurizing or depressurizing. There’s something strange not only to the shape and movement of the fire but also to the texture of the air, thin but almost windy.

Dean fights his way back, to the space that was the garden, and Castiel is sitting crosslegged on the floor, facing the body of a balding man in a suit.

“Cas!” Dean cries. “Cas, you have to get out of here-- you have to--”   
Castiel doesn’t turn, but he does shout, over the fire and the whooshing, “Dean, you must leave, now.”

“Castiel, no, come with me, you have to--” 

And then there’s a crashing sound, and Dean finds himself on the ground, under something. He tries to move, to push it off of himself, but he can’t and suddenly the air isn’t just thick with smoke it’s  _ thin _ .

“Dean!” Castiel cries out, and the air gets thinner but the burning disappears, and then the air rushes back, in all at once. 

Dean gasps for air, but whatever is on him is crushing his lungs, making it harder and harder for him to breathe. 

“Dean, no, stop, don’t move,” Castiel says. “Let me take care of this.” He grabs it, whatever it is, and he pulls it upward. Dean manages to wriggle out from it a bit, before Castiel drops it to the side, away from him. Castiel falls to his knees, beside him, his face angry and scared. 

“You  _ fool _ ,” he sighs. “You  _ fool _ .”

He cries, and it’s ugly and sudden, his face scrunching up. Dean moves to sit up, but it’s hard; he’s probably broken a rib or two. 

“Cas, what the hell is going on?” Dean croaks, and he props himself up on his elbows. “Just  _ talk _ to me, let me help.”

But Castiel is beginning to turn grey, inch by inch, bit by bit. He seems thinner, thinner in this place, like maybe the material of him is beginning to run low. 

“Dean you have to leave,” Castiel says. “Dean, you have to  _ go _ , now.”

Dean moves to stand, but it hurts. 

“I made it hungry,” Castiel says. “I made it hungry and it wants-- it wants to take everything with it, Dean, you have to go. You have to  _ leave _ .”

“Cas, no, what,  _ come with me _ ,” he says, holding his ribs, standing. 

Castiel shakes his head, still crying. “Dean you have to go, leave me. This is what I did. I meant this, this is it for me. I’m taking them with me, the coven. I’m taking magic with me. I’m taking it with me, no more in this city. Okay? So go-- Dean, go. It’s hungry. It’s taking me--”

“Cas, no, I love you,” Dean says, watching him turn thinner by the moment, the air growing thinner, too. 

And then there’s a push and a rush, and Dean is pushed out the door again.

He stands outside, beside Sam who has a phone to his ear and a panicked look on his face and he screams, suddenly. “Cas!  _ No! I won’t let you go! I won’t let you leave me!” _

But the building crumbles, suddenly, and Dean knows that if they went in for a body, there would be none to be found. 

And Dean--

He falls to his knees. And he cries. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is more to come.


	29. Chapter 29

It’s the little things, in the coming time, the passing weeks, the months. It’s the way Sam’s skin improves and stays good. It’s the way the wind curves around him when he walks outside and the way the air feels different. It’s the weight he feels in the car beside him, always there. 

It’s the way he never feels alone, even when Sam’s not around and the bunker is empty. 

Dean feels it in the rain, his fingertips and hands, firm and present. In the snow he feels his breath. In the sunlight, he feels something else, something like his present and steady gaze. 

He feels him everywhere, but he’d do anything to actually feel him, to hear him, to be near him, again. 

Dean feels his absence; Dean feels his presence. 

He feels this in everything. 

And it’s not that the presence makes the absence better, and it’s not that the absence makes Dean regret the time they had together, however short and strange it might have been. It’s just that--

If it had meant Castiel was never magical and he were still here, Dean would have that. If Dean had never met him and he were still here, he would have that. 

But there’s nothing to that he can change. He can’t undo it. 

He drives, from the bunker, back into the city. The quiet drive, no radio, no tapes. He feels his voice and tongue heavy in his mouth, aching to talk, like maybe if he asks a question, Castiel will answer, somehow. 

Presence.

He drives, and he pulls in front of the lot where Castiel’s shop used to be. 

He sits in the car for a long time, looking at it.

It’s a community garden now, and there’s something--

There’s something to that.

Even now, here and not here, he’s grounded in the city. In helping people. 

Dean stays in the car, but he feels his voice unstick from his throat, and he says, “Hey.”

There’s no answer, which is to be expected, and then he says, “I’m sorry I pulled a gun on you, the first time we met.”

He runs his hands through his hair. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t have my shit more together, when you were here. Sorry it took...it took you...I’m sorry I said it when I said it, instead of earlier. I meant it. I still do,” he says. He hopes he’s heard. 

He thinks he is.

“I love you,” he says. “And I didn’t think I would miss you, like I do. But I do. I miss you. I wish you were here.”

He swallows, around the tightness in his throat. “Sammy’s skin looks great,” he says, laughing. “Better than it ever has.”

He leans against his steering wheel and closes his eyes. He doesn’t cry.

“I love you,” he says. “I miss you. I wish you were here. I can feel you everywhere. I wish you were here.”   
And he feels a weight, on his shoulders, almost an embrace. 

And he closes his eyes, and cries.

Presence. Absence. 

“You were right, about the magic in the city,” Dean says. “No more witch activity, no more ghosts. Whole town is-- it’s mundane. I think it’s safer like this.” He laughs again. “You took the magic with you.You were the magic. It was you.”

A warmth, here.

“I love you,” Dean says. “I know you’re here. I wish you were more here.”

Maybe a whisper.

Maybe a  _ me too. _

“I love you,” Dean says. “I miss you.”

And he waits a long time, and he feels the presence, still. 

Castiel but not Castiel. Here but not here.

And he starts the engine, and he drives, West, for a until the city melts away and the road opens up wide and free. 

He goes, and he takes Castiel with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've basically known since May that there was no way to end this without me killing castiel ('killing'), which is a big part of why i have been so slow to update it. i have been  
> agonizing  
> over this.  
> thank you so much for reading this and following me with this. i hope you liked it.  
> pls check out my blog   
> moosefeels.tumblr.com  
> i've written a ton of other dean/cas stuff that has ended minus death, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from REM's "Texarkana"


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